How health reform might play out

Those who support the health care bill (now law) say that it is every citizen's right to have health insurance coverage. Why is it their right to have coverage, but my responsibility to pay for that coverage? And pay I will.

While I won't be directly affected by the income tax increase I'll pay indirectly in other ways. Starting next year, drugmakers will have to pay a $2.3 billion fee. That fee of course will be passed down to all of us. The year 2014 marks the beginning of the end for employer based heath care coverage. In that year employers of over 50 people will pay a $2,000 fine per employee if they don't provide coverage.

According to some it costs companies on average $10,700 per employee to provide that coverage. You do the math. Either the employee will have to come up with $8,700 to cover the difference or the company will drop coverage and pay the fine.

Only time will tell how this law will play out. It appears to me however that in a few years only the politicians and the rich will have good coverage, the coverage of the poor will improve and the coverage of the middle income folks will be the same as that of the poor.

John Malec

Bensenville