Republican Idiocy On American Health Care, Parts I and II

Idiocy, part I

I just learned, this morning, a bit ago, that the Republicans are claiming one reason they want to do away with the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, "Obamacare" is because health care is so expensive under it.

Really.

So health care costs are rising too high---actually, the percent of increased costs with this legislation is far lower than before it--so they want to do away with it.

The fact is, without Obamacare, if they do away with it, this will make it possible to go back the way we were prior to it, when corporations could and would and did raise our prices and costs to the outrageous limits they were already at. There will be no holding back the pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies and all of them, to whatever high amounts they want. The sky will be the limit, if even there. No restraints of any kind.

But they expect lower costs.

Idiocy, part II

The second thing I learned today about the new Republican push on health care, from the morning news programs, is that they want to put the power "back to the individual states." They want to give more "strength", if you can call it that, to the individual statehouses in each state.

Well, first, why wouldn't they? Since they've gerrymandered the voting districts in each state much as they could and put in more voted ID laws and everything else they've done, to disenfranchise as many Americans as possible, they now control more state capitols than the other political party.

Second, since they're the political party of the already-wealthy and corporations, this is magnificent for them and their benefactors, certainly. And it is so strongly.

We're all familiar with "divide and conquer."

Let's not let this happen, America. Let's not let them dismantle the one bit of health care help we've gotten in our nation in the last 50 or more years.

Links:

Obamacare: an unheralded success - The Boston Globe

Six years later, 'Obamacare' gets credit for successes

The success of the Affordable Care Act is 

a hugely inconvenient truth

Why Democrats need to speak with one voice on Obamacare

GOP launches long-promisedrepeal of Obamacare with 
no full plan to replace it

Quote of the day

''If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.'' —Stephen Colbert

On the 9/11 anniversary

I watched some news programs this past Sunday morning and naturally virtually all of them advertised that they'd be doing long anniversary specials on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It depresses me for so many reasons it's nearly overwhelming. News junkie that I am, that day I'm going to skip these things. Besides the worst tragedy of all these attacks, what gets me most is that it was so unnecessary and so avoidable. The FBI, internally, knew Al Qaeda members were learning how to fly planes, hastily and in pretty good numbers, across the country and, worst of all, President at the time, George W. Bush had a Daily Presidential Brief back in August, warning that Osama bin Laden was trying to do this very thing. That is, that he was preparing to attack New York by plane. Finally, that same administration was still allowing small pocket knives on commercial flights across the nation. As you'll recall, that was how one group of terrorists were able to take over at least one plane, with small pocket knives. European security hadn't allowed such things for years. What it boils down to is, 9/11 shouldn't have happened, absolutely. It was totally, utterly and completely avoidable. That it did happen is shameful. Yet George W. Bush is off in Texas, fully enjoying his cushy, wealthy, fatcat life. It would be nice if Americans recognized and kept in mind his dereliction of duty and what it ended up meaning to the thousands of people who died that day, unnecessarily. Links: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030700216.html; http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=131432&page=1; http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20040801215339657; http://www.slate.com/id/2097476/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US

Rebuttal to Ben Stein and the selfish rich

As a teenager, a favorite button a friend of mine mentioned, for a laugh, read "Eat the rich". Too frequently, in humankind's history and experience, it becomes a good idea, it seems. Have a great week, y'all.