Let me start out by saying I am completely in favor of socialized medicine. I believe this is the greatest nation on the earth and as such we should be able to provide healthcare to everybody in it. The country that is not the earth, although that would be grand. I’m completely baffled by people who spend their energy boasting, sometimes angrily, about the greatness of this country and yet think the country is unable to do such a great thing. What’s the point of being great? I’ll guess we’ll now debate what a great thing is. The other baffler is why would the greatest nation in the world providing healthcare for every one of it’s citizens be such a bad thing?
Lesser nations do it. Canada, Australia, Great Britain, all provide healthcare to the entirety of its populace. Canada and Australia largely escaped the recession too. Their healthcare systems didn’t tank or cause their financial system to tank. And yeah, I said it, those are lesser nations.
Anyway, I’m all for universal, socialized, communist health care. The problem is Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act is not socialized healthcare. It really isn’t health care at all. It has ultimately become a gateway for insurance companies to raise rates, even though they don’t have to. Folks, again you’ve been tricked by the media, right and left wing branches. Once again they’ve dangled a squirrel and we have gleefully taken the distraction bait. The villains here are the insurance companies. They have no need to raise the rates but they can under the guise of Obamacare. The law is the problem no doubt, the hen house door left unlocked as it were. The insurance companies are the all too willing foxes. The fox doesn’t need to go into the hen house. It’s a wild animal and preys on other wild animals. But the hen house is easy money. Unlocked, it’s defenseless. It requires no investment and comes with a huge payoff. The gift that keeps on giving.
The farmer charged with protecting the hen house is the guy who left the lock off. And he did it on purpose.
For those struggling to keep up with my labored analogy, the President is the farmer in this scenario.
President Obama wrote a great law and then in order to get it through the Congress and create some mythical legacy he allowed it to be watered down into this abomination called the Affordable Care Act. He then spent every nickel of his political capitol pushing it through. What came out the other end of the sausage grinder was not fit for human consumption, literally. The original was a law that went from single payer with a government option that would have actually covered every American, to this bizarre law that is so f*&^ed up it’s been rolled out in pieces and most of it has been delayed. It’s a bill that is causing the layoff of workers and the cutting back of full time employees to part-time. This cut back was predicted by the conservatives and poo pooed by the liberals.
Well I’m a liberal, hence my belief in healthcare for all, and I can tell you the cutting back of full time workers to part-timers is so vast and so deep some economists believe the 40 hour work week may be a memory in 5 – 10 years. Gang, that is light speed in politics and public policy.
Hey Mr Pres, what’s a matta, you law no work?
So as another big hunk of the ACA gets held up, coincidentally, the part that would regulate insurance prices, the apologizers and deniers have gone on the offensive. That would of course be the Democrats who defended this law. They have to, I mean since they’re the dopes who mangled it to the current garbage we have now.
Still, the apologies and denials are, well to overuse a word, baffling.
Congresswoman and Democratic Party Chair Debi Wasserman Shultz (D) FL, went on the Sunday talk shows to say this is what they had expected all along and it’s not news. Really Debi, so just another made up scandal is it? Even my son Frank, pictured above left, knows that’s a load of bulls#*t.
Then the MSNBC crew fired up their Klingon cloaking device in a vain attempt to cover for the President.
Karen Finney, host of Disrupt on MSNBC weekends, said with a straight face that the President had already told us the bill would be rolled out in parts and some things may take time to iron out. Two things here Karen: 1. No he didn’t and 2. that’s not how laws work. Once voted on by congress and signed by the President they are considered law. Implementation date may be pushed to the start of the next calendar year or even the next fiscal year, which for government agencies is usually Oct 1st. You certainly can’t brake a law up by saying, well we’re not sure how to implement this so forget it for another year, or my favorite, we can’t afford this part yet so 2015 looks good. You can catch the genius known as Ms Finney on MSNBC between To Catch a Predator and Locked Up marathons.
Union presidents have gone on the Sunday shows to complain that they are finding out they won’t be able to keep the insurance they have. Still the liberals say it’s all bluster, all to scare the American people against the first black president. Mika, a co-host on Morning Joe (also MSNBC) all but said those exact words. In case you were wondering, the unions backed Obama and the democrats in 08 and 2012 and are traditionally liberal.
The cake topper was the early afternoon weekday show on MSNBC. I’m not even sure of the name or the host, but they had the republican congressman from Oklahoma’s 5th district, James Lankford. The panel was debating scare tactics being used by republicans in regards to ACA. You know stuff like layoffs, hours being cut etc… Mr. Lankford told the panel his district has seen a lot of layoffs but even more disturbing were the amount of businesses cutting hours and migrating to a part time schedule for the bulk if not the entirety of its workforce.
Of course the panel, being in New York and not in the 5th district, felt they had a better handle on the situation on the ground in Oklahoma than the congressman, who was doing the interview from his district not Capital Hill. They all but called him a liar, so deep is their denial of this law’s disastrous effects. But that pesky Mr Lankford had to go all facty on them, naming businesses and showing stats and relaying personal stories he had heard all to prove what he and a lot of us already knew.
Conservatives got this one right.
The law sucks and the American middle class will bear the burden. Oh didn’t I mention the other piece of the bill being delayed, the mandatory health care provision for corporations. Meaning big businesses and corporations won’t have to provide coverage for all it’s employees yet. Small business will still have to implement according to the mandate. Seems that part of the bill has some problems and implementation is impossible for bigger businesses at the moment. That bit about Pelosi saying pass it then we’ll figure it out, yeah not going so well. Turns out losing the game and then working on your game plan just doesn’t get it done.
Denier-in-Chief WH Spokesman Jay Carney
But you know the apologists and deniers said we had been told this would be coming so it’s not, you know, like a news story or anything, just a, you know, plot to discredit the black President.
I would laugh if that last sentence weren’t the true belief of the liberals and progressives still clinging to the mantra this President can do no wrong, simply because he’s black.
News flash amigos, Presidents mess up, write bad laws, make dumb decisions regardless of their skin color. All the white ones messed up and now the black one has too. Saying so doesn’t make you a hater, it makes you an American.
I’m a liberal and this law is an insult to every President who has ever written a law, so yeah, all of them.
I’m also an American and my President messed up.