The youth vote is a notoriously disappointing demographic for a politician to court. To get the them you have to risk saying things that will alienate other voters, they’re hard to fully please, and 9 times out of 10 they won’t show up to vote at all. In 2008, an astounding three quarters of people under the age of 25 who voted, voted for Barack Obama. It was the highest youth voter turnout in decades, and it looked like the first and only indicator those “Rock the Vote” campaigns were working.
In the two-plus years since Obama took office, those of us who voted for him have to defend him an awful lot, mostly from a country losing its mind by having a black supreme leader, but also some that have legitimate complaints about the Obama Presidency. Most say he goes too far, and a wiser minority says he doesn’t go far enough.
However, if anyone ever asks me to unequivocally say why I think Obama is a good President, I answer in one sentence: I now have health insurance, and under Bush I didn’t.
I could mention that Obama has helped out young people in many direct ways like ending some of the predatory credit card lending practices and easing the massive burden on student debt. He has helped them out in subtle, indirect ways like repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and being the living embodiment of a multiracial America, trying to quietly usher in a new era of tolerance for a young generation too often following the same bigoted rules as before.
At the end of the day none of that matters to me so much as the fact that under “Obamacare” (Republicans can call it that all they want to, the bill still works, and they need more than childish name calling—no more sophisticated than saying Obama has cooties—to make people that have actually read what’s in it hate it) I have health insurance, and for about two years, mostly under Bush, I lived under the apprehensive cloud of not having it.
Under the new healthcare law, insurance carriers can’t drop you if you have a preexisting condition. They also can’t deny you coverage because of it. And they also have to let young people stay on their parent’s insurance until they’re 26, when the previous cutoff for those that had already graduated college was 22. ALL of these are things the American people want and had been asking for, but the people protesting this bill are letting blind hatred of Obama stand in the way of something that probably benefits them. Too often I hear people say they hate the bill but when I bring up one of the provisions I just mentioned, they say “Well now I do like that part of it,” and talk about how their 24 year old son, cancer stricken daughter, or mentally handicapped nephew now has health insurance. They don’t like the insurance mandate, but they also realize that’s what keeps costs down.
They “hate” a bill that benefits them, because they really just hate the man. Why? The biggest reason is because he passed the healthcare bill. It’s a circle of nonsense, but instead of saying I hate Obama, I’m going to say thank you to him.
Insurance companies secretly want us to all die while we pay high premiums monthly because they know it would cost us more if we actually visit a doctor. They are betting we wont because we are all already struggling.
I have a cousin that can now health insurance because of this law. I too thank him for it.
My son can now be back on my health insurance because he was not going to college. College is too high and we can’t afford it and he didn’t have health insurance. Why can’t people see this health insurance is a GOOD thing. Quit bitching and wake up people. Obama is trying to help this country.