As of Oct. 1, Americans without health insurance have been able to sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act; also known as Obamacare.
Unless one’s head has been under a rock for a considerable amount of time, one can see that this act is one of the most controversial programs to emanate from D.C. in eons.
As a supporter of this law, I will tell you with a clear mind and conscience that Obamacare should not be a lightning rod for any dispute. What should be the lightning rod is the Republican Party’s actions in shuttering the federal government to defund Obamacare.
Equally disgraceful is what they plan to do to cover those working individuals who lack health coverage. Their plan for today has always been their plan: to do nothing.
America is the only developed country in the world to not provide its citizens with health coverage. Nations such as Great Britain, France, Germany, and Canada provide cradle-to-grave coverage and view such policy as good government.
The conservatives in our fair land tell you that health coverage is a personal responsibility and that government is much too inefficient to do a good job administering it.
These two lies would be laughable if people were not dying because of them. And make no mistake, they are dying.
How is it personal responsibility when one is denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition?
What about being denied because of a problem caused by big business greed; the problem of not being able to find full-time employment so employers can then deny health coverage?
These atrocities are beginning to be corrected through Obamacare. What about the employers who offer insurance but offer either unaffordable or wholly inadequate plans? Obamacare addresses that also.
Being unable to pay for private insurance because of shoddy and ridiculously expensive plans is not a dereliction of personal reasonability; yet the Republicans would love for America to believe just that.
As for government-run health care being inefficient, that is a dastardly lie.
America’s federal healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, spend less on paperwork and administration as a percentage of total cost than does the private healthcare cabal.
They are also more effective. America now lags behind other nations who have government healthcare in every age demographic save one: senior citizens. Why are our senior citizens now on par with those in these other nations? It is because senior citizens in America are able to free themselves from the shackles of private health insurance and sign up for Medicare.
Given all these facts about the ineffectiveness of private health insurance and the effectiveness of government-run healthcare, why do conservatives in America fight it so? Why did they shut the government down over a program passed by Congress, signed by the President, and deemed constitutional by the United States Supreme Court? I believe the answer is simple, direct, and two-pronged. The first answer is one Americans do not want to hear. The conservatives against Obamacare care about only one thing: profits. They care about profits for the insurance and hospital industries.
The other prong in the answer is the one Americans really turn a deaf ear to. The conservatives against government-run healthcare programs like Obamacare want Americans to work until they get sick and then die. Yes, they are the lords and we are the serfs. Their world is a happy one of haves and have-nots. They love the uninsured American being a have-not. They are gluttons who see our country as a game of profit and loss. Specifically, they profit while we lose. While this sounds harsh and partisan, examination of the debate and the facts make this the only conclusion.
It is time for us Americans to smarten up. It is time to realize that not all Americans want everyone to succeed. It is time to be realistic. There are hogs among us, hogs who fight to do things like deny healthcare. I am a supporter of Obamacare precisely because of two reasons: it actually helps people and it infuriates the hogs in the political system.
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