The Legal Drinking Age Of The United States - 1345 Words

With food, there comes a variety of cultural differences with beverages. One of the most popular drink markets in the United States is energy drinks. This industry has grown significantly in the past ten years, and many of the companies are household names, such as Red Bull, Monster, and Rockstar Energy. While they have mainstream success in the United States, many countries look down on these products because of their use of certain supplements, such as excess amounts of caffeine of taurine. Some countries have done things such as banning the sale of these products to minors, or even outlawing them completely. These products vary from culture to culture, with some countries introducing their own product lines, ones that are only available†¦show more content†¦This is a common practice among college level students, particularly those in a fraternity. Another factor that plays into American culture is the large amount of alcohol users that are considered alcohol dependent. Of all of these alcohol users, 4.7% are considered to be alcohol dependent, meaning they must drink a certain amount of alcohol to feel as if they can function properly (World Health Organization, 2014). In comparison, the legal drinking age in Russia is 18, and there is an average alcohol consumption of 11.5 liters per capita. This alcohol consumption is made up of 51% spirits, 38% beer, and 11% wine. When it comes to alcohol dependency, Russia is much higher than the United States, with 9.3% of their total drinking population considered alcohol dependent. Though there is more alcohol consumed, and a more relaxed policy on who can drink in Russia, they are a lot more strict on drinking and operating a vehicle. The United States blood alcohol content considered to be legal when driving is .08, whereas in Russia there is a zero tolerance policy on drinking and driving. This strict policy has lead to fewer alcohol related accidents and deaths, even though there is a much higher amount o f alcohol consumed (World Health Organization, 2014). One surprising fact is that many countries practice abstaining from alcohol altogether.

The Life Of Walden Pond, By F. Scott Thoreau Essay

Shortly after my stay on the shore of Walden Pond, I returned to civilization and took a job as a scrivener to assimilate myself back into society, a much more difficult task than it would seem, and because I needed money for food, shelter, clothing, and fuel, which are necessities for pondering the true meaning of life (Thoreau, 986). I was not particularly happy about taking the job, but I had few choices in the city. In my short time there I encountered the most silently desperate man (Thoreau, 984) I have ever encountered. His name was Bartleby, and my brief encounter with him caused me to solidify my beliefs on philanthropy, deliberate living, and progress, while teaching me to appreciate the humanity in every person. On my first day of work, my boss led me to the section of the office in which I would be working. â€Å"Our old scrivener prefers not to work right now† he said, passive-aggressively gesturing to Bartleby â€Å"and that is why we’ve hired you to re place him.† I looked over at the motionless man, but he gave no acknowledgement to either of us. Instead, he stared out the window, which looked directly out onto a brick wall. The boss left abruptly and I began to get settled in the office and eventually I decided to engage the man by the window. â€Å"So if you’re not working, what do you do here, Bartleby?† I asked the motionless man. To this question, however, he offered no acknowledgement or response, he simply stared out the window onto the wall. I was interested in

As I Lay Dying 9 Free Essays

string(74) " as similar in protective function to Cash’s carpentry†\(56 Powers\)\." May 10, 2010 013 Child Relations In the book â€Å"As I lay Dying† by William Faulkner the character that is dying name is Addie Bundren, the mother of five children. She was also the wife of no good Anse Bundren. Anse is lazy, selfish, no good farmer, who can hardly be called a farmer because he does almost none of the work himself. We will write a custom essay sample on As I Lay Dying 9 or any similar topic only for you Order Now Out of an act of lust Addie and Anse married and ended up giving birth to Cash and Darl soon after. After the birth of her two sons Addie was bent on not having any more children. The birth of Cash confirms her feeling that words are irrelevant and that only physical experience has reality and significance. Through the act of giving birth she becomes part of the endless cycle of creation and destruction, discovering that for the first time her aloneness had been violated and then made whole again by the violation† (Vickey 54). Anse wanted as many children as possible so that he would have as many hands a possible to work for him, but Addie was determined to have no more. This made their marriage very rocky and lead to Addie requesting to be buried with her blood relatives in town. In this time period this was hard because of the lack of transportation that they had as well as a lack of money. Her determination to not have any more children was brought to an end because she had an affair with Whittfield, which lead to the birth of Jewel. Anse did not know of this affair so he thought that jewel was his child. Addie decided to make it up to Anse by giving him two more children. â€Å"She consciously and deliberately gives Anse Dewey Dell to negative Jewel and Vardaman to replace him† (Vickey 55). Among the five children that she had Addie treated them all in a different way. Addie especially treated Cash, Darl, and Dewey Dell very differently. The relationship between Cash and Addie is magnificent for many reasons. Out of the five children that Addie had she liked Cash’s personality the most. Cash is the oldest of the five children. In addition to being the oldest, Cash is also a man of very few spoken words. He can be considered a very simple character compared to the others of the novel. For example, in his first narrative excerpt from As I Lay Dying Cash speaks in list form. {draw:custom-shape} This is one of the most simplistic forms of communication known. As a skilled carpenter, Cash, went and built his mothers coffin, especially to her liking in front of the window in which she was slowly dying. Cash and Addie had a relationship based off very few spoken words. â€Å"Her blissful union with Cash exist beyond body language: Cash did not need to say it [love] to me nor I to him† (Clarke 38). Clarke is explaining in this passage how there are no words needed in the relationship between Addie and Cash. As Cash built his mothers coffin, for each piece that he completed he held up for her approval. â€Å"She’s just watching Cash yonder† (Faulkner 9). This shows how Addie was continuously looking out the window to check on Cash’s progress on her coffin. Cash is extremely determined to complete the coffin. â€Å"With Cash all day long right under the window, hammering and sawing at that——â€Å"(Faulkner 19). This is proof of their strong relationship because he spends all his time doing this strenuous task. â€Å"Work is Cash’s way of communicating with Addie, his means of getting and holding her attention, and thereby assuring that unspoken understanding that has always existed between them†(Bleikasten 179). Bleikasten is showing that Cash rarely speaks unless it is through his actions such as building the coffin. Although Addie and Cash did have a very good relationship, Cash still needed something to help him cope with the death of his mother. For him this would be his carpentry skills. â€Å"The carpentering itself is an activity in which Cash can immerse himself sufficiently to insulate himself from the harsh reality of his mother’s imminent death† (Powers 56). This is simply saying that Cash is using carpentry to replace his mother after her death. The work of mourning begins before death has actually occurred† (Bleikasten 178). The mourning begins early because Cash already has a strong feeling that his mother is about to pass on so he begins to work on her coffin. â€Å"The building of the coffin should become for Cash the object of a manic counter investment. If he cannot be the jewel, he can at the very least be the jewler, the maker of the perfect shrine in which the mother’s precious body is preserved. In nailing Addie into the coffin, Cash encloses himself with her, burying his desire and pain† (Bleikasten 179). Cash making the most perfect coffin possible is his special way of mourning and the completion of the coffin with his mother’s body in he is enclosing his pain. â€Å"The infant loved by his mother grows to be a man of deeds; and Addie, in the absence of Jewel, calls out to him at the moment of her death—and he continues that relationship in his silent agony on the wagon†(Williams 117). Addie and Dewey Dell did not have the best relationship but at the same time did not have the worse possible relationship. Addie felt indifferently towards Dewey Dell, meaning that she didn’t particularly care what happened with her. She didn’t really care because Dewey Dell was only meant to negate Jewel because it was her illegitimate child that Anse did not know of. Addie purposely gave Anse Dewey Dell and Vardaman to make up for the birth of Jewel. Dewey Dell clearly did not have the strongest relationship with her mother though. â€Å"Dewey Dell is not so clearly disturbed by her mother’s death, yet her activity with the fan at Addie’s bedside may be seen as similar in protective function to Cash’s carpentry†(56 Powers). You read "As I Lay Dying 9" in category "Papers" Dewey Dell too had something to substitute for her mother’s death. Dewey Dell, terribly preoccupied by the bud of life within herself- the result of going to the woods, the ‘secret shade,’ with Lafe- can scarcely attend to Addie’s death†(Powers 56). Dewey Dell quickly became pregnant after an agreement that she had with Lafe. Lafe manipulated the agreement and found a loop hol e and ended up picking cotton into her basket. As she lost her virginity under the secret shade and realizes soon after that she is pregnant â€Å"Dewey Dell admits that ‘the process of coming unalone is terrible’† (Williams 105). It quickly became clear that â€Å"Dewey Dell has no need to replace the mother figuratively, for she replicates the mother in her own pregnancy† (Clarke 41). This shows that Addie and Dewey Dell really did not have a close relationship because even through her pregnancy she should have been attending to her mother’s needs as she left this world. Further more as they took the casket into town, Dewey Dell’s intent to go to town was so that she could try to find some abortion medicine, because like her mother she did not necessarily want her first child at that point in time. So the daughter goes through the same experiences as her mother: in pregnancy Dewey Dell discovers as Addie did her destiny as begetter, and like her mother she is snatched from aloneness only to be thrown back to it†(Bleikasten 180). Although Addie and Dewey Dell have many similarities when it comes to their pregnancies they are also different. â€Å"Unlike Addie, she is determined, if possible, to effect their separation. Thus, she will not name her condition even to her self because to do so would be to transfer her pregnancy from her private world of awareness to the public world of fact† (Vickery 61). Darl and Addie on the other hand had the worst possible relationship ever. This was proven several times throughout the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Darl had said â€Å"I cannot love my mother because I have no mother† (Faulkner 95). This shows exactly how they have a bad relationship, but it is not just a one way street, Addie in turns hates Darl also. â€Å"Addie claims to have been tricked by a word in Darl’s conception; she says that my revenge would be that he would never know I was taking revenge. And when Darl was born I asked Anse to promise to take me back to Jefferson when I died† (Williams 115). This is the beginning of the dislike on Addie’s behalf because she did not want another child to begin with, so she intended on getting revenge on Anse. â€Å"He too must finally cast the son most like him (Darl, the one that folks say is queer, lazy, pottering about the place no better than Anse, the one who most resembles his father looking out over the land†¦with eyes [that] look like pieces of burnt out cinder†(Williams 115). In this passage Williams describes why Addie actually hates Darl. She hates Darl because she hates Anse with a passion, and Darl acts just like Anse in the sense that he is lazy like his father. Because Addie accepts the fact that she and Anse live in different worlds, her second child, Darl, comes as the ultimate and unforgivable outrage† (Vickey 54). Since Darl receives no love from his mother he makes it his duty to terrorize everyone else in the Bundren family minus Anse. â€Å"Never having had a mother, Darl is more surely poss essed by her than any of his brothers. Darl’s eyes, as Dewey Dell describe them, are full of the land dug out of his skull and the holes filled with distance beyond the land†(Bleikasten 188). Darl is known for his abilities to communicate without words, â€Å"at times, a kind of nonlinguistic â€Å"feminine† intuition† (Clarke 35). Using this ability he continuously terrorized Dewey Dell because he was the only one whom knew of her pregnancy in the Bundren house hold. In one of Dewey Dell’s narratives she said â€Å"He said he knew without words like he told me that ma is going to die without words, and I knew he knew because if he had said he knew with words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw us† (27). What Dewey Dell is explaining is that Darl speaks to her without words and knows of all things that are happening and only the most important things Darl says with no words, such as the death of their mother. Darl also takes it upon himself to confuse his youngest brother Vardaman even more than he already is. For example, Vardaman says â€Å"My mother is a fish† (84). This shows how confused Vardaman really is. The conversation that Darl and Vardaman had concerning Vardaman’s mother being a fish and the horse being Jewel’s mother really left Vardaman confused. As if this little part was not confusing enough for the five year old, Darl then confesses that he does not have a mother. â€Å"I haven’t got ere one, Darl said, Because if I had one it was. And if it is was, it can’t be is. Can it† (101)? This conversation leaves Vardaman in a world of confusion. He now starts to doubt if Darl and Jewel are really his brothers. â€Å"Darl, who seems to float through a world of words, passing into peoples minds and crossing vast spaces at will† (Clarke 46). Darl was able to make everyone miserable because he had no substitute for his mother’s death unlike everyone else in the family. Vardaman had the fish to replace their mother, while Dewey Dell had her pregnancy to occupy her mom, Jewel had his horse, and Cash had his carpentry to replace the emptiness left by their mother’s death. Darl had no substitute â€Å"because he never had a mother to replace† (Clarke 46). Darl said this several times throughout the novel in many variations. For example, â€Å"I can not love my mother because I have no mother† (95). There is a reason why Darl feels this way and Addie in turn hates Darl also. Darl’s feeling that he is not a part of his mother is more than just an expression of sibling rivalry. Addie’s rejection of him is absolute; it is the most terrible thing she does. † The rejection by his own mother makes Darl feels that he has no mother especially as a support system. In turn Addie rejects him because he is just like his father Anse of whom she despises as said previously. As a resulting factor â€Å"for Darl, the constant e xception, the journey is a continual nuisance, and he wants only to see his mother- distinctly dead- buried and out of the way†(Powers 61). Darl is constantly suffering emotionally throughout his life due to the absence of his mother, and continues to be affected by his lack of motherly guidance once Addie actually passes away. â€Å"His brothers, as we have seen, all end up some how displacing their grief and replacing Addie: Jewel with a horse, Vardaman with a fish, Cash with a coffin. But Darl’s mother is literally irreplaceable† (Bleikasten 188). Darl’s mother is irreplaceable because all his life he never had one because he was despised by Addie. In conclusion Addie Bundren had very different relationships with her children. After her death all her children had different ways of coping with her loss also. The relationship with Addie varied greatly from her children Cash, Dewey Dell, and Darl. Cash, her oldest child, she had a great relationship with. They loved and understood one another through the minimum use of words possible. Often times they communicated through body gestures and other types of movement. To substitute the emptiness in Cash’s heart due to the death of his mother, he focused on carpentry. Cash hand built Addie’s coffin to her approval as she looked beyond the window as she lay there dying. Addie and Dewey Dell had a relationship in which they felt indifferently about one another. They basically coexisted within the same house hold. Addie brought Dewey Dell into the world with a purpose: to â€Å"negative† Jewel because he was Addie’s illegitimate son. Dewey Dell also had a replacement for her mother after her death. At the time of Addie’s death, Dewey Dell is pregnant with her first child. This pregnancy takes the focus that Addie would have had on Addie and redirects towards an illegitimate child of her own because she is not married. And then there was Darl. Addie and Darl had the worst relationship possible between a mother and a son. They hated each other. Addie despised Darl because he was just like her husband Anse of whom she also despised. Darl also was her second child who she really did not want to have at all. This was the point in which she vowed to seek revenge upon Anse and made Darl an outcast. As for Darl, he hated Addie because she never mothered him his whole life, which left him broken emotionally causing him to terrorize the rest of his siblings especially his younger ones. Darl did not have a substitute for the death of his mother. In Darl’s eyes he had no mother so the mourning of her would be pointless for him. Work Cited Bleikasten, Andre. _The Ink of Melancholy_. Requiem for a Mother. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 1990 Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage, 1990. Powers, Lyall H. Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Comedy. : The University Of Michigan Press. Ann Arbor. Vickey, Olga W. The Novels of William Faulkner: A Critical Interpretation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. Print Williams, David. _Faulkner’s Women: the Myth and the Muse_. University of Toronto Press. 1977. How to cite As I Lay Dying 9, Papers

Obama Care Pros and Cons free essay sample

Tens of millions of uninsured will get access to affordable quality health insurance through the marketplace. In order to get the money to help insure tens of millions there are new taxes, mostly on high-earners. The taxes that may affect you directly are the individual mandate and employer mandate. Over half of uninsured Americans can get free or low cost health insurance using their States Health Insurance Marketplace The individual mandate says you have to obtain health coverage by January 2014, get an exemption or pay a fee if you can afford it. Medicaid is expanded up to 15.9 million men, women and children below 138% of the poverty level. Medicaid is expanded using Federal and State funding. Not all States have to expand Medicaid. CHIP is expanded to cover up to 9 million children. CHIP also uses Federal and State funding. You cant be dropped from coverage when you get sick or make an honest mistake on your application. You also cant be denied coverage or treatment for being sick or charged more for being sick. You cant be charged more for being a woman either. Insurance companies must cover sick people and this increases the cost of everyones insurance. Small businesses can get tax credits for up to 50% of their employees health insurance premium costs. The employer mandate says that in 2015 businesses with over the equivalent of 50 full-time employees must provide health coverage. In anticipation some businesses have cut employee hours. Young Adults can stay on parents plan until 26. 82% of uninsured adults will qualify for free or low cost insurance. Young people tend to be healthy and not to need coverage as often as older Americans. Medicare is improved for Seniors including eliminating the donut hole, keeping rates down and expanding free preventive services. Some Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals have been limited. (Medicare pays doctors more than any other type of coverage and the rates have led to very complex problems that are driving the costs of health care up for everyone). All coverage starting after 2014 must include new preventative services and essential health benefits. Insurance premiums have increased  due to insurers having to provide covered services. ObamaCare helps to curb the growth in healthcare spending. ObamaCare focuses more on making sure people are covered than it does on addressing the cost of care in the first place. Average American The Average American (those making under 400% FLP) will most likely see a reduction in their insurance premiums and 30 of the 44 million without insurance will gain access coverage via the ObamaCare exchanges, Medicare or Medicaid. ObamaCare offers a number of protections and benefits to all Americans. Beyond the 10 essential health benefits mandated by ObamaCare, additional benefits range from chipping away at pre-existing conditions to expanding health services. Overall, the quality of health care is increased, while the cost, in theory, will be reduced. Middle income Americans (those making between 133% 400% of the federal poverty level), and employees will be able to use tax credits and out-of-pocket subsidies on theexchanges to save up to 60% of the current cost of premiums making insurance affordable for up to 23 million Americans. Affordable insurance is defined as costing less than 8% of your annual income. Tax credits cap cost at 9.5% for sliver plan for those making between 300 400% FPL. One of the cons of ObamaCare is that since many Americans work for larger employers, some employees may have the new costs involved with insuring their workforce passed onto them. Other workers will see a decrease in quality of plans offered by employers, to avoid the employer paying a excise tax on high-end health insurance plans. These cons will affect less than 1% of businesses, and only a small fraction will deal with the new challenges by cutting worker hours and benefits or not hiring new workers. When it comes to women, ObamaCare offers many pros and few cons. 47 million women will gain access to womens health services, including preventive and wellness services. Many of ObamaCares new benefits for women are required by law to have no out of pocket payments. There arent many cons for women beyond those of the Average American, however there is the issue of contraception and its availability. ObamaCare expands contraception coverage but this mandate is one of the most contested  aspects of the new health care bill and can easily be seen as a con depending on ones viewpoint. Essay The Obama health care legislation known as the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) has received mixed reviews over the last couple years. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices (Health Reform in Action, 2012). Many people dislike the idea of Obamacare because of misinformation obtained from the press, political candidates and by those who refuse to seek the information themselves and go on hearsay. The new health reform law provides security to the hardworking citizens of the United States. Obamacare holds insurance companies accountable, lowers health care costs, gives Americans more freedom and control in their health care choices and improves the quality of care (Health Reform in Action, 2012). With Obamacare, insurance agencies cannot create limits on care and the yearly limits will no longer exist in a couple of years. More than 5.1 million people on Medicare have saved over $3.1 billion on prescription drugs, including a one-time $250 rebate check to seniors who fell into the prescription coverage gap or â€Å"donut hole† in 2010, and a 50% discount on brand-name drugs worth an average of $604 per person in 2011 (Health Reform in Action, 2012). In every state and for the first time ever, insurance companies must publicly justify their actions if they want to raise rates by 10% or more and more states have the authority to reject unreasonable premium increases (Health Reform in Action, 2012). President Obama has stated on several occasions that the new health legislation would start out slow but pick up over time to compensate for the initial loss. Advocating for health care will ensure that American citizens 1. ACA allows young Americans to stay on their parents’ insurance plans Because of ObamaCare, which allows kids to stay on their parents insurance plans until age 26, 3.4 million young Americans now have coverage. The percentage of uninsured young people (ages 19 to 25) fell accordingly,  from 48% in 2010 to 21% in 2012. According to polling, three-in-four Americans support this part of the Affordable Care Act including, yes, over two-thirds of Republicans. 2. ACA bans insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions Another aspect of ObamaCare that has already taken effect is the ban on insurance companies denying coverage to patients based on pre-existing conditions. That means an end to insurance company horror stories like four-month-old Alex Lange being denied health insurance because he was too chubby. This is why the conservative allegation about death panels is so ironic; while the actual ACA law does not contain death panels or anything remotely like them, the fact is that prior to ObamaCare, insurance companies were effectively operating like death panels in denying life-saving coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition and by applying life-time spending caps on coverage. The ban on pre-existing condition limits, which will apply to every single American by 2014, is supported by 83% of Americans. 3. ACA offers tax credits to small businesses to buy insurance The Affordable Care Act expands tax credits to help small businesses provide health insurance to their workers. Companies with fewer than 50 employees do not have to provide insurance, but even for these businesses, ObamaCare will make it easier and cheaper if they choose to do so. According to polling, 88% of Americans think these small business tax credits are great, including — wait for it yes, 83% of Republicans. That’s right, over eight-in-ten Republicans support the provision of ObamaCare that helps small businesses afford and expand their health insurance offerings to employees. 4. ACA requires companies with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance Over 96% of companies with more than 50 employees already provide health insurance to their employees. And contrary to Republicans claiming otherwise, studies show the vast majority of those employers do not plan to drop or reduce that coverage because of ObamaCare. Also, there is no evidence that ObamaCare has led to companies slashing full-time workers. In fact, since ObamaCare passed in March 2010, over 90% of the gain in employment has been full-time positions. Still, we know that companies that can afford to provide health insurance to their workers and yet fail to do so off-set the costs of care onto the rest of us — whether the cost of emergency room treatment that gets passed on to other consumers, or Medicaid  coverage that we pay for as taxpayers. In Florida alone, more than 50,000 workers at companies like McDonald’s and Burger King are on the state’s Medicaid rolls. Especially with tax credits available to small businesses, there is no excuse for companies to pass the buck. And 75% of Americanssupport this element of ObamaCare. 5. ACA provides subsidies to help individuals afford coverage Many of the 45 million Americans who lack health insurance simply don’t have enough money to afford coverage. ObamaCare will lower the cost of premiums but also provide subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans purchase insurance. Americans who earn $45,000 per year (about 400% of the federal poverty level) wi ll qualify for some form of subsidy. The amount of the subsidy will be based on income as well as the cost of health coverage in a particular state but, for instance, according to a subsidy calculator created by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a 27-year-old living in Houston, Texas, who earns just $15,000 a year could sign-up for a mid-level plan for about $300 per year with the help of subsidies. Without subsidies, that plan would cost $2,400 per year. The few Americans who think subsidizing care is a bad idea should, again, note that we already subsidize health care to a far greater degree in the form of Medicaid and also when the uninsured rely on free emergency room care and pass those astronomical costs on to the rest of us. But most Americans — 76% to be exact — support the individual subsidy. That includes 61% of Republicans. There’s even more aspects of ObamaCare that the American people already support — including the employer mandate, the increased Medicare payroll tax on higher-income Americans and the expansion of Medicaid. And then, starting October 1, here’s one more: 6. State-based health insurance exchanges Americans of all political stripes like choice and competition, which is precisely what the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges will create. So it’s no wonder that 80% of Americans — including 72% of Republicans — support the health insurance exchange program in ObamaCare. And that’s even before the exchanges have taken effect! Plus, a new report shows that health insurance premiums will beeven lower under ObamaCare than originally projected. Personally, as someone who pays through the nose for individual insurance in New York State — a state where, historically, few individual  insurance options have even been available — I can’t wait to enroll in ObamaCare and see my premiums plummet, as they are expected to by at least 50%. Again, all this is why Republicans are in such a desperate rush to try and defund ObamaCare before October 1 — even if it means holding our economy hostage and even if most voters, including Republicans ,oppose the repeated and wasteful defunding attempts. After all, the law is already popular when it’s not fully in effect and most people haven’t felt its benefits. We all know what will happen when ObamaCare takes effect — and works! Republicans who are throwing temper tantrums over sour grapes need to grow up. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, President Obama signed it into law and the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality. The cost of doing nothing on health care reform was too great and the cost of repeatedly refighting the political battles of the past is obscene. But then again, it makes perfect sense why Republicans refuse to just give up and shut up — because the minute they do, there will be no more distractions from all the good things about ObamaCare. Three years ago when I was shopping for insurance, there weren’t that many options to choose from. And the plan I ended up with is expensive and, to put it bluntly, crappy. Currently, I pay $965 per month for family coverage that includes: †¢ a whopping $7,000 deductible; †¢ $36,000 out-of-pocket max per year; †¢ an annual coverage limit of $2,000,000; †¢ a $35 co-pay for doctor’s visits ($55 for specialists); and †¢ a $15 co-pay for generic prescriptions. All this plus the plan has very limited out-of-network coverage that, I found out the hard way, is subject to such a gauntlet of procedural hurdles that my family has spent thousands of dollars in so-far-unreimbursed out-of-network expenses. I’m not going to tell you who my current provider is, though I’m inclined to purely out of loathing and spite. But for the record, for over a year I paid for their version of â€Å"gold† coverage that had a $3,000 deductible, only a $25 doctor’s co-pay and a $6,000 out-of-pocket max. But that plan didn’t process any of my reimbursements either and cost a whopping $1,687 per month. That’s over $20,000 per year! You can see why, regardless of what party I vote for, I was excited to have some more  affordable options. So I logged onto the New York State health insurance exchange website. Yeah, I had a few false starts — the website was down a lot early on either because of service glitches or overwhelming traffic. For a few days, I couldn’t do anything at all on the website. Then for a day or so I could â€Å"log-in† but not complete registration. And then for a day, I could answer the questions to complete my registration but not actually complete the process. On one occasion, I got so frustrated at the stalled exchange website that I actually shook my computer. Not pleasant. But finally, early on the first Saturday morning following the launch of the exchange site — probably because the rest of the state (unlike my five-year-old) was still asleep I was able to log-in and complete my registration and check out all my options for insurance. There were literally 50 plans that were better than my current insurance both with lower premiums, lower out-of-pocket costs and better coverage. And there were ten plans with a higher premium than my current insurance, but with lower deductibles. So and here’s an important point the reason that more people haven’t signed up for coverage yet is probably that, just like me, they needed to take some time (and first, find some time!) to weigh all the options. While the exchange site was user-friendly and explained my options in a clear and simple way, picking an insurance plan isn’t exactly like ordering a hamburger. It took a minute to find my calculator and think about the options. Within a week, I had settled on a â€Å"gold† plan offered by Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield. The plan includes: †¢ a $2,000 total deductible; †¢ an out-of-pocket max of $12,500 for the year; †¢ a $30 co-pay for visits to our primary care doctor; †¢ a $15 co-pay for generic prescriptions; †¢ NO annual coverage limit — because that’s now prohibited thanks to the Affordable Care Act; plus †¢ an added bonus: the plan I selected includes child dental. This option will cost my family $931 per month — $408 per year less than my previous crappy plan and a $5,000 savings in deductibles. A big win for me and my family financially and in terms of what’s covered. Plus in the past, I spent several days looking for and comparing insurance  options. Under ObamaCare, even with the slow and sticky website, I spent a total of four hours — to save over $5,400. That kind of return on investment would make Warren Buffett drool. Counter to wild stories about the government taking over health care, the exchange was simply a public portal to a range of all-private insurance options. I went with a â€Å"gold† plan for lower deductible and out-of-pocket costs. And I chose Blue Cross Blue Shield because my current primary doctor is in-network. But one of the most exciting things is the new companies providing private insurance through the exchange; I’ll be watching the reviews over the next year and might change plans when re-enrollment comes around. As of October 20, the Associated Press reported that 476,000 Americans had filled out insurance applications through the federal and state exchanges. Not bad, considering the poor performance of the sign-up websites. But it’s only been 20 days since the exchanges launched, and folks have 60 more days (through December 15) to sign up for coverage to take effect on January 1, 2014. And people have 60 days after that (February 15) before the individual mandate penalty kicks in. In other words, there’s still plenty of time to fix the websites and for more Americans to enroll — and save. Meanwhile, we know that in a state like Oregon, ObamaCare has already reduced the number of uninsured individuals by 10%. Glitches aside, that’s a great start. We’ve suffered through four years of outlandish attacks against ObamaCare that it will kill our grandmothers, or at least just kill our economy. But the fact is that ObamaCare has created a private marketplace so that millions of American families like mine can get affordable, quality health insurance while keeping more of our hard-earned money. Ideologues may not like ObamaCare, but my wallet and my family’s health su re do.