And I'm 66 years old.

Once I left my job and lost my insurance, private insurance for my preexisting condition would have been out of my financial reach, and I would not have been able to afford my medications.

The VA and now Medicare may very well be the only reasons I'm still around to write this.

Of course, if I hadn't had those options, I would have been forced to stay on at work, and absorb the inevitable deterioration in working conditions, pay reductions and insurance rate hikes, benefit cuts and otherwise put up with their crap until they felt I needed to be laid off. (Which of course, could have come at any time that was convenient for them). And you can multiply all that by 2, because my wife is 71 years old and hasn't had her own workplace health insurance in over 30 years. You see, the free market has its own "death panel", and it is extremely efficient.

Now do you see why the Right hates Obamacare? There is only one fair way to do this: Everybody gets some basic level of health care, and everybody pays.

Of course, we could just round up all those who can't afford to pay insurance premiums, the old, the poor, the sick, and the young, put them in camps, let them die and reduce the excess population. It would certainly keep our taxes down.