affordable health insuranceAs anyone who’s ever been self-employed or worked at a freelance job can tell you, finding affordable health insurance, including self employed health insurance and accident health insurance can be tough. Right, now affordable health insurance is only a dream for many people, even middle class people with good jobs, as many businesses are either dropping or cutting back deeply individual health insurance as a company-paid benefit, leaving employees to really scramble to pay for health insurance for themselves and their families.

It’s really kind of a scary time for families with kids and without affordable health insurance. There are many families out there with both parents working, who still have to put their kids on some kind of state-subsidized health insurance because their employers don’t provide affordable health insurance. And as the economy worsens, we’ll be seeing more and more families and individuals who have no health insurance and may never again work for an employer who provides paid health insurance as a fringe benefit.

More and more, it’s looking as though company-paid health insurance will be a perk that only upper-level management types like CEOs will be getting. For the average Joe Lunchpail, slaving away at some ordinary job, affordable health care will only be an unattainable dream as he cruises through life hoping against hope that no one in his family will have a major accident or expensive health problem. And for the self-employed or freelance workers, the problem of finding affordable health insurance will only get worse.

A big reason for the lack of affordable health insurance comes down to politics. Politicians like the President, Senators and Members of Congress, have some of the best health insurance and medical care on the planet. Because they’re insulated from the problems facing average Americans they probably don’t think about affordable health care enough.

Another problem is the vast amounts of money that the pharmaceuticals industry pours into elections, along with a similar deluge of cash from other sectors of the health care industry. The drug business and big health care providers are doing just fine, thank you, and they don’t want any changes. But until enough Americans get outraged about the lack of affordable health insurance or self employed health insurance, nothing will change. Americans will continue to gouged by their health care providers and be given inferior care and have care denied for serious, expensive ailments.

What America really needs is the equivalent of the Manhattan project for health care that will provide affordable health insurance for every single American no matter where or how he or she is employed. What the health care picture looks like in the near future will depend a lot, I think about which party wins the 2008 Presidential Election.