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Freedom For Fools: Obamacare Opponents Will Pay With Their Lives
To restore something to a former position, or put something new in the place of an existing thing is referred to as replacing. Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed and signed into law, Republicans began parroting their mantra of “repeal and replace” to convince ignorant Americans that Republicans have a plan to help them meet their healthcare needs that is far and above superior to the ACA. As conservatives, Republicans are notorious for ferociously defending the status quo and resisting change, especially if change involves helping the majority of Americans. During the healthcare (insurance) reform debate, Republican legislators insisted they preferred small incremental changes to the way insurance provides healthcare to Americans and after two years of careful consideration, they have decided to replace the ACA with nothing and eliminate Medicare to keep more Americans sick just to enrich the insurance industry.
It is no secret Republicans want to return to the dysfunctional healthcare industry atrocities the ACA corrects, and many Americans are not intelligent enough to comprehend that their choice is not between the ACA and a better Republican plan, but the new healthcare law or no healthcare coverage whatsoever. Under the Republicans’ non-plan, tens-of-millions of Americans face the prospect of never having healthcare coverage, and for the privileged few who can afford health insurance, they are at the mercy of insurance providers who can deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, exceeding providers’ lifetime limits, and be dropped for using their healthcare insurance.
At one point, Republicans floated the idea that allowing consumers to buy their healthcare insurance across state lines was better than real reform. The ACA already allows that but Republicans object to minimum standards states must abide by and they intend to remove those standards to protect the insurance industry. The GOP would give state policy makers the power to tell insurers that if they establish their base in a particular state, healthcare rules would be written in the industry’s favor. Obviously, the industry would migrate to the state with the least oversight and fewest restrictions that would leave all consumers with only one choice much like the credit card industry. In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the Republican plan and they concluded that the proposal increased the cost of coverage for people expected to have higher healthcare costs (seniors, children, and the sick) and decreased the number of sick individuals who could afford insurance.
The Republican objection to setting minimum standards is opposition to federal regulations and if there is anything they will not tolerate, it is government regulations that protect consumers. However, Republicans are not satisfied restricting access to decent affordable healthcare for millions of Americans, they are on pace to eliminate millions of low-income Americans, seniors, and children’s access to any healthcare by severely limiting access to Medicare and Medicaid, and they have been relentless in portraying the poor and seniors as leeches on society to engender opposition to safety nets and the health law. Republicans do not believe healthcare is right and they were successful in convincing their supporters that the ACA is robbing them of their hard-earned money and their freedom.
Last week while the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the Affordable Care Acts’ constitutionality, protestors opposed to the law expressed their hostility in three words; “I support freedom.” When the protestors were asked what freedom the ACA was robbing them of, they parroted themselves and reiterated that they support freedom. The freedom they support is freedom to wallow in sickness, disease, and injury if patient protections in the ACA are eliminated, and it is regardless their ability to afford private insurance coverage that providers will deny with impunity despite their presumption of privilege in affording healthcare coverage. The least opponents of the health law could do is be honest and admit that they support the insurance industry’s freedom to deny healthcare to all Americans, and that they agree with Republicans that good health is a privilege reserved for those fortunate to afford it.
Republicans have no intention of replacing the ACA and, in fact, are placing more Americans at risk of suffering ill-health unless they are extremely wealthy. Their only goal is protecting the insurance industry from the ACA’s patient protections and their vote to eliminate Medicare and funding to assist low-income, poor, and retired Americans is proof positive that they intend to drive more Americans into despair with no hope of ever having healthcare coverage much less good health. They knew they would never replace the ACA, and instead of returning to the status quo, their support of the Ryan budget means going far beyond the inequities of the old system and instead are putting millions of Americans at risk of never having any healthcare that was their goal all along. It is important to remember that throughout the healthcare reform debate, Republicans parroted their dyed-in-the-wool belief that healthcare is not a right all Americans should enjoy, but a privilege for the few who can afford it. Hopefully, if the ACA is ruled unconstitutional, the first recipients of denial of coverage are those vile human beings who oppose the law on the basis of freedom because the only freedom Republicans are giving them is the freedom to lose their coverage and with no Medicare safety net, they will be free to wallow in sickness and eventually die. That is, after all, what Republicans are replacing the Affordable Care Act with; death by illness and Republican contempt.
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10 Responses to Freedom For Fools: Obamacare Opponents Will Pay With Their Lives
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Churchlady
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 10:37 am
This morning’s “Sacramento Bee” has an ad from a GOP Congressman that screams how ACA is going to kill Medicare. He cites how HIS plan, the GOP plan, will “save” it. It will assure that, per the Ryan Budget plan, prescriptions will be “protected”.
The old vicious Vietnam era mentality is back – “we have to destroy the village in order to ‘save’ it” – now applied to health care.
What I don’t understand is how people can fall for this. Every person on Medicare suddenly and spectacularly has NO copays for huge numbers of tests and preventive procedures. Do they think that “just happened”?
Americans may be the most ignorant people in the developed world. They make no effort at all to learn about policies before taking up the drumbeat from someone whose entire focus is on preventing that same citizen from benefitting from anything.
Even if the Supreme Court upholds ACA, sheer, willful ignorance will drive too many people to disdain the help they and others can receive from this reform. It’s bad enough the GOP want to send us all out in the fields to die – it’s really stupid when we help them do it.
jlt
Apr. 4th, 2012 at 9:41 am
Hmmm..more lies for the low information willfully ignorant right..
The truth:
www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cf...
SinghX
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 10:51 am
…”Republicans parrot[ed] their dyed-in-the-wool belief that healthcare is not a right all Americans should enjoy, but a privilege for the few who can afford it…”
Most Americans (not just the lower income levels) of the middle class cannot and will not be able to keep up with the insurance rates, rejection of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, or rising medication cost due to the greed unleashed upon them by the medical industrial complex.
And, ALL retirees will watch their savings disappear faster and faster (remember the ‘Baggers signs saying Obama was going to “rob” their grandchildren via more debt?) as they will need wheelbarrows of cash to cover their hospital visits; older Americans will be the first ones to go in large numbers and their “rich” offspring will be strapped with the debt left by their parents (yeah, check out all those mid-west, southern states who will/do come after the family after grandma dies for the bill).
Even now, we see families where there are safe “pensions/retirement funds” (upper middle class) with a couple of siblings helping “mom” who is turning 90, with her 4-6K plus monthly assisted living; where would these families be without any Medicare to supplement? They are already pooling funds to keep “mom” alive and comfortable
…and these are folks with means…take it down a few income levels to the middle class…the Teabaggers are screwing the Pooch and are too stupid to realize, they’re the first to go via their, “I support freedom”!
Oh the irony of it all…
Ken
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 11:25 am
The funny thing is that only about 12 million are affected by the mandate with a fine or tax, since they were planning to get insurance, but now won’t. The rest of the uninsured will get subsidies, since many do not have jobs or are under poverty level income for family size. And the fine will be about $96.00 a year for most charged with the tax/fine. that’s nothing compared to the $1100 increase in premiums for the insured each year. If That doesn’t show that uninsured affect health care commerce, in a negative way, I don’t know what is. And Scalia now calls the democratic party the republican-coined democrat party. Living with Frank Luntz, Scalia?
The rest of the law can stand as is, but premium increase will be about 2/4% on top of their normal rate hikes. This bends the cost curve to get health care down. Maybe, this will engender the SCOTUS to recommend in their decision a single-payer model. This will put the responsibility on the repugs to help get it done. This info came from RAND Group (not Heritage). www.rand.org/health/featu...
Shiva (Moderator)
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 11:42 am
the GOP is being true to their own model, which is driving themselves out of business with stupidity. By protecting the healthcare companies there will be less people insured and there will be many more small insurance companies popping up to take up the slack. This is already occurring, I am insured by one of them.
the major higher-priced insurance companies will eventually go out of business thanks to the Republicans. Obama gave the large insurance companies an opportunity to ensure large numbers of people taking them far more money. But the GOP wants to strangle them while they are helping them. That’s like an octopus killing itself for food
Sugapea
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Remuse…You’re the best!
OK…EVERYONE…We need to write more Letters-to-the-Editor of our local Newspapers!
Express the facts…very simply, (remember many are ‘dumbed-down). Explain how the GOP are out to fool them again!
‘The flip side of Fear…is Understanding’
We need to help them ‘understand’ National Healthcare is for theirs and all of America’s benefit!
‘Live your life with empathy…
And we can change the world’!
Second Amendment Democrat
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 4:02 pm
The entire “insurance” industry is nothing but a racket, a scam based on rules that would make a Las Vegas casino owner blush.
Pay me until you need the service you are paying for. At that point, I will bring to bear an army of legal experts whose job it is to prevent you from receiving the money you thought you were paying for. And if, by some terrible oversight, we DO have to pay you – this once, we will drop you so we never have to pay you again, AND insure that no one else will insure you (read: “take your money for nothing”) either.
The rest of the civilized world has a healthcare system that works reasonably well, and it works for ALL its citizens. The ONLY reason such a system is not in place in the US is (care to guess? Betcha don’t have to…) PROFIT, on an unprecedented scale.
You CANNOT place health care into the hands of a for-profit corporate environment and expect anything but the very WORST care possible. (It is actually required by law…)
Now that “Obamacare” is likely to be rejected, AFTER the insrance companies already jacked up their rates, Big Pharma added their extra margin for no reason beyond greed, and the hospitals decide to join the party – we are left with unaffordable, likely non-delivered health care – except, of course, for members of Congress and the 1%…
THEY SUCKERED YOU AGAIN. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
Remember in November,
REMEMBER IN NOVEMBER.
Val Fahey
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 8:40 pm
I concur with 2nd Amendment Democrat. Not everyone who opposes Obamacare is a wingnut.
Peter Gatliff
Apr. 2nd, 2012 at 8:54 pm
I canit believe here it is 2012 and still cleaning up the Richard Nixon mess. He signed the bill allowing “Pre Existing Condiditons’. On top of more people have died duefur to this law than all the wars sense the Revolution in 1775. I call it Polite Genocide of the American people for profit.
Anne
Apr. 4th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Opponents of ObamaCare like to bray like the jackasses they are about “freedom.” Their idea of it entails the concept that it’s everyone for himself or herself, not taking into consideration that we all subsidize each other in various ways. They are the very people who carry water for those who would drown them without a second thought, and they either don’t know or choose to overlook that those they carry water for want the “freedom” to exploit all of us with no accountability.