How Obamacare Compares to JFK Airport

Unless you are a regular air traveler, you probably will not appreciate the utter frustration at what has happened to me in the last few hours. No one died or was seriously hurt, no property (make that none of my property) was damaged or destroyed, and no one ended up in jail. However, I was reminded throughout the night how this was probably the way Obamacare will operate, slowly and frustratingly driving us all mad.

I was boarding a JetBlue flight, the proverbial redeye, in Salt Lake City. I would be changing planes at JFK and would finally end up in Boston. I had checked my larger bags and of course kept my laptop bag as a carryon. For anyone familiar with Salt Lake, it is awash with Mormons, and so my flight was filled with young, cheerful and polite young people who seemed to be making an attempt to load all their worldly possessions into the overhead bins. It quickly became obvious that only a small portion of what had been dragged aboard the plane was actually going to fit inside.

All airlines/airports have a procedure to mitigate this issue called gate-check. The flight attendant gives the passenger a claim ticket for his item and it is loaded into the luggage area with the checked baggage. This system has two distinct advantages: 1. The baggage in question is usually treated with more care than checked baggage, making it an appropriate storage method for delicate electronics and musical instruments. 2. When the plane lands, airport personnel simply deliver this items to the ramp just outside the aircraft door where they can be easily claimed.

However, at JFK, the airport has adopted the Obamacare method of service for gate-checked baggage. I and my gate-check compatriots waited for some time on the ramp until all passengers had disembarked and the cleaning crew was inside. Finally, a cheerful flight attendant informed us that at JFK uniquely, gate-checked baggage goes straight to baggage claim. It would have been nice to know this information before handing over my laptop, since the JetBlue personnel were certainly familiar with the procedure.

We hurried down to baggage claim, just in time to see the two very expensive videocams that had been gate-checked by two videographers as they came tumbling down the chute, probably never to work again. My laptop seemed none the worse, but I of course had to re-enter the long line of travelers to go back through the TSA security checkpoint. I was "lucky' to have a three hour layover, because I have used most of that time getting back to my gate.

I can't wait for Obamacare.