Why are more people (like Judi Franco) opting for Urgent Cares?

There's been so much talk about the affordable care act, more commonly known as Obamacare, in the news recently. Throughout the entire period that the law was being drafted, until its enaction, there were so many voices out there supporting it or opposing it, that it got to be a confusing mishmash of facts and opinions.

Even now with Trump supporters anxiously awaiting, the fulfillment of his campaign promises to repeal and replace, it's still hard to make sense sometimes of how it actually affects us day-to-day, until we're either in that waiting room or paying those medical bills. The obvious manifestations of it are the higher out-of-pocket costs associated with it, at least for those of us who are unlucky enough to be what The federal government considers well-off.

But there's another aspect that you don't think about until you need it, urgent care. It's no coincidence that urgent care facilities are popping up throughout New Jersey like weeds. Throughout the entire country, in fact. If this is not proof of the abysmal insult that Obamacare is to the middle class, I don't know what is.

When one of my children needed a doctor yesterday, we took a moment to consider bringing him to the emergency room. Then we realized that the cost of that would be prohibitive. Now, granted, had it been a "true life-threatening emergency", as they like to say on doctors outgoing messages, price would've been no object. But this was one of those situations that fell into the middle. The ones where we might have been able to wait, but then again we might not have.

So we opted for the middle ground, the urgent care. The one that would only cost us a $100 co-pay plus whatever medications he might need. After calling around to several in our area, We found that there were varying wait times from two hours to up to 3 1/2 hours at some. Was my child not worth a long wait time? Of course he was. But the point is, the idea of our having taken the best healthcare system in the world and messed it up to the point where we have to wait in lines reminiscent of foreign countries whose medical systems we have always scoffed at is sad and offensive.

So whether you supported President elect Trump or not, those of you (like me) who don't fall into the category of the wealthy or poor should be praying he keeps his promise. Maybe he can make America's healthcare great again. By taking it away from the government and giving it back to the people

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