Obamacare: The Dadwagon Endorsement

Dr. Scott Atlas is not a happy man these days. He is not just the head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, he was also Rudy Giuliani’s health care adviser during the former New York mayor’s abortive (oops, touchy word!) 2008 presidential run.

So when I heard him speak a few weeks ago at Stanford, to the rather undersized Stanford Conservative Society, he had serious, um, reservations about Obamacare.

He made several excellent points, mainly concerning the incredible quality of the research and innovation in American health care. Bully for us, we have a purring Ferrari of a health care system, and the very best surgeons and specialists from Cleveland to Clovis.

There was lots in his anti-Obamacare stance that I objected to, as a father and a freelancer.

Broadly speaking: The system, friends, is broken. A friend of mine (and of DadWagoner Christopher) had a baby a couple of months ago,  a handful of weeks early. She is home now with baby, and both are fine, thank God. The bill for her care and her baby’s care? $300,000. She, fortunately, had insurance. But millions of Americans do not. They have driver’s insurance, yes, but not health insurance. The time for celebrating incrementalism is over. Reform—even bolder than what the House passed—is the tonic. Deal with it. The insurers and the doctors have had their day (more like their century) of running health care, and they have only themselves to blame for their losses. It’s time to let someone else run the show.

Here’s a quick DadWagon rundown of what the health care bill means for dads and their kids:

• • If you’re a rich dad, then your taxes will go up. We certainly don’t like poor people reading our fancy blog, so I hope all our readers are rich. In which case, you should be a little miffed. Sorry, dudes. But really, even the really rich don’t like paying $300,000 for childbirth.
• • If you have a kid with an illness (and you aren’t filthy rich), this is a great reform. Insurers will no longer be able, in their blood-stained way, to deny you insurance because you had the temerity to bring a kid with a pre-existing condition into our awesome capitalist system.
• • If you are a sick dad, insurers will have to stop fucking with you in a similar manner, but not until 2014.
• • Immunizations. Yes, I know Jenny McCarthy blames them for autism and probably dwarfism and solipsism, but they are important. Health insurance plans will have to cover them. Herd immunity, baby, here we come.
• • Your children can stay on your plan until the age of 26, not 18 as they do now. This is important. Again, uninsured young adults cost the rest of us money when they break their necks doing kegstands.
• • CHIP, which was a pint-sized precursor to mandatory insurance (for low-income children) will be protected until 2019. At which time our Tea Party president will call it a faggot and disband it in a public ceremony, probably involving a pitchfork and some fire.