Being poor does not mean that you waste your excess income, it means you don’t have income. Being poor is the lack of having any money to spend. I think the work done recently in the United States on the Affordable Care Act is very good and while anything that big is going to have problems in it, overall it’s an improvement for the country. That said it all ignores the poor with impunity.
You can find our countries official definition of poverty here:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/13poverty.cfm
What is the reality? About 10,000 dollars a year or less, even nothing. That 10k comes to $27 a day including food and housing which would tend to leave 10 to 0 dollars over for personal freedom. What does this have to do with the Affordable Care Act? Well it’s expected that everyone must buy insurance or pay a fine for not having insurance. The goal of these rules is to spread the risk of medical problems over all of the population so that costs can be minimized for an individual. That all works for people with some money but what happens to people with no money?
If I have $0 and my leg hurts constantly I can go to a free clinic (If there are any) or an emergency room where my non-deadly condition will be ignored. If I have no insurance then my visit to a doctor might cost $200. If I DID have insurance then my visit could cost just $50. But I have no money so either way I can’t afford it.
Coverage itself is the same way, if I have no money I can’t buy any coverage and I can’t pay whatever fine might be laid on me for not having coverage because I have no money.
So if I am poor I can get emergency room help if I am going to die without it, we have had laws on that for a long time now, but if I have pain or trouble moving or problems with my skin I can go to a place where people have the skills and tools to help me and be refused.
The truly poor will get no benefit from having insurance or from the insurance industry being reformed. Am I wrong? Have I missed something? Tell me, I want to know.
Families making less than 133% of the poverty line will be covered through Medicaid.
Someone pointed that out to me. In Tennessee our governor has refused that money. Additionally it seems there’s no clear answer whether Medicaid will still require co-payments.