One thing that hasn't been mentioned. You can pass rules about pre-existing conditions and cancelling policies all day long, but the rules don't mean anything unless they are enforced. Our current regulatory system has been gutted, because so many people in our government think regulation is bad. I was getting cancer treatments while on Cobra last year, and my insurance company refused to pay for some of my bills, even though they were clearly covered under Cobra rules. I filed appeals, filed complaints with ERISA (the Department of Labor), even talked to a lawyer. But no one seemed to do anything. They just wrote letters and shrugged their shoulders. There didn't seem to be any penalty for the insurance company for refusing to pay. I finally got paid, but it took 11 months (and since I'd had to pay out of pocket to get the treatment I needed, that was 11 months without money that I desperately needed - and of course they didn't reimburse me for that.) The new rules sound great, but someone has to enforce them in order for them to mean anything.

As far as "nobody goes without health care in this country", that's just not true. There are huge gaping holes in our "safety net". I applied for Medicaid and was told that I didn't qualify because in my state, mothers and children got first priority. Single people without children had to go on a multi-year waiting list. Because I had stage III cancer, I might have been able to get disability, but there is a two year waiting period before you can get health care after you qualify for disability. Some states have high risk pools, but you generally don't qualify until you exhaust your Cobra, which is very hard to afford if you're too sick to work and your unemployment benefits run out. And doctors and hospitals are very quick to turn accounts over to collections. I couldn't pay a hospital bill for a couple of weeks, and even though the hospital knew about the delay, they turned my bill over to collections, and I had collection agents calling me day and night. While I was recovering from surgery!

You might get treated if you walk into an emergency room with a heart attack, but if you need long term treatment, it's very difficult to get it without insurance. I managed to hold onto my Cobra, but I only escaped bankruptcy because I recovered quickly and I was able to go back to work within a few weeks of finishing chemotherapy.

Someone earlier asked about what kind of health insurance Congress gets. I'm not sure, but the general federal employee health plans can be found here: http://www.opm.gov/insure/health/

Appearance doesn't mean much. People were always telling me growing up how much I looked like my mother's family. Except that I'm adopted and don't have any genetic relationship to them. So I would take the comment that your daughter "looks Czech" with a big grain of salt.

On the other hand, I think people are a bit too dismissive of genetic ties to health issues. I guess I'm a bit sensitive about this because I had a type of cancer that runs in families. It's almost never found in younger women unless they have a family history. Unfortunately, I don't know my family history, and so it wasn't found until it was stage IIIc. Which meant months of grueling chemo and a much worse prognosis. (There is a genetic test, but insurance won't cover it and it's very pricey.)

At some point in the future, you might want to tell your daughter about the possibility, so she can decide for herself what she wants to do. Do you think this would make her love her Dad any less, or feel less connected to her family? I don't love my parents any less because I'm adopted, and I consider their ethnic heritage mine as well.

Last year, I was laid off from my job, and then found out I had cancer. I just barely managed to hold onto my Cobra coverage long enough to finish my cancer treatments, mostly by running up a frightening debt on my credit cards, but if I hadn't been lucky enough to get a job, I would have ended up bankrupt. I still had a gap when I was uninsured, which is very scary when you have cancer. I saw firsthand how easy it is to slip through the cracks, even when you've spent your whole life working and paying your insurance premiums.

So when my more conservative friends start talking about how we don't need health care reform, I remind them that I was one of those "uninsured people" not long ago. The answer I always get is "oh, well, I don't mean people like YOU, I mean "THOSE OTHER PEOPLE". When I respond by saying "well, how are you going to keep "those other people" from getting insurance without throwing people like me under the bus?" they don't have an answer.

I don't think it's directly racial for my friends, I think it's more of a class issue. But it's hard to get them to understand how little it takes to go from one of the "haves" to one of the "have nots" when it comes to health insurance.