Healthcare reform confusing to many

For the past year, Francis Marion University senior Christie Woolwine has not been on her parents’ health insurance.

And because she can’t afford it on her own, life hasn’t been easy. She’s currently doing student teaching as a part of her elementary education degree, which means she spends a lot of her time around kids.

“Being in the schools doing internships with students, I find that I get sick a lot,” she said. “And so I wish I could go to the doctor and get an antibiotic, but I just tough it out.“

Woolwine says she would like to see the government offer some kind of help for people in situations like hers, but she doesn’t know how it can.

“I think having health insurance available to everybody in America could definitely benefit a lot of people,” she said. “But the thing that I’m concerned about is the tax dollars that we pay that may get lost in the administration of the program.”

Woolwine is one of many people who don’t know what to think about a new healthcare reform bill going through Congress. In the past few months, it’s caused divisiveness and confusion among politicians, pundits and the public.

Scott Kaufman, an associate professor of history at FMU, said the reason for these problems is that several questions still have not been answered.

“So there’s so much confusion out there as to what plan is going to be passed, what is going to be in those plans, what the executive branch wants in those plans, that people really aren’t certain what it is they should be expecting out of all of it and what they may be expected to do or what might be taken from them in the process of a plan,“ he said.

In a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, President Obama hoped clear up any confusion that might exist. He detailed specifics of how he would achieve his three basic goals for reform. He plans to create more security and stability to those who have health insurance, provide health insurance for those who don’t, and slow healthcare costs for families, businesses and the government.

But the details, he says, still have to be worked out.

In the meantime, Jamie Rogers, also an FMU student, faces a dilemma similar to Woolwine’s. Next March, she’ll no longer be on her parents’ health insurance, and she’ll have to begin searching for her own.

“It kind of makes me upset,” she said, “because that means that I’m going to have to find a job that pays more, that allows me to pay for private insurance.“

But unlike Woolwine, Rogers, who is president of the school’s College Republicans organization, isn’t interested in any government involvement in healthcare.

“I don’t think the government should be involved in how I take care of my healthcare, or how I take care of my bills or my finances,“ she said.

Rogers hopes that the graduate school she’ll attend after graduating from FMU will offer a plan.

“And that could hold me over for a few years,” she said.

Kaufman says that any specifics Obama offers may not be enough to bridge the gap between all sides in the healthcare reform issue.

“Will it be enough?” he said. “Even his own party is split. The democrats are divided.”

And until the nation’s leaders can find a way to come together, folks like Woolwine and Rogers may just have to choose between toughing it out or finding something to hold them over.