Health Care Reform Becomes Law: David Loftus

It’s not worth the wait, it’s not enough, and it’s stupid to have to jump through so many hoops to get what Americans should have gotten nearly a century ago when President Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican, by the way) first proposed it.

It’s been many years since I’ve heard such extravagant horse puckey as the objections raised by Republicans Sunday night when I watched C-Span. They said they stood for “freedom”; but how free were we when most of us had no choice but to accept the insurer our employer chose for us (or could afford), insurance companies told us which doctors we could go to and which medical procedures we would be allowed to undergo, and many of us had no access to insurance at all. Opponents of health care reform charged “socialism” when most of them couldn’t explain what the word means, and they didn’t seem to realize that A) Medicare and Social Security, now supposedly so American and beloved, are socialistic programs, and B) the Republican Party opposed those programs just as vehemently when they were first proposed. (I suggest anyone who used “Socialism” or “socialistic President” as epithets this year should immediately forfeit any access to Social Security or Medicare benefits, since they are evidently ideologically opposed to such government coddling.)

Opponents said the Democrats were ignoring the will and wishes of the American people, but gosh, a majority of Americans voted to put those Democratic congresspersons in office, so by definition, the latter were representing the interests of the former. Republicans made a big deal about a recent poll that apparently found 54 percent of those questioned were opposed to the current legislation, but they didn’t ask why. Some part of that 54 percent were undoubtedly tea-baggers and anti-socialist patriots, but perhaps a portion were also annoyed with the current legislation because it didn’t go far enough, too much had already been sacrificed, and they felt betrayed by the process. (I could include myself in that category without much trouble.)

Republicans complained about the cost, and the addition to the deficit, when few of them ever made a peep about rising government spending under two terms of George W. Bush, and nobody seems to have noticed that we have spent the better part of a trillion dollars already on the Iraq War ($713 billion, as of this week, according to www.costofwar.com; it’s nearly an even trillion if you add the war in Afghanistan) -- a “program” which does almost no Americans any good at all (save a few war contractors) and in fact has killed more than 4,000 Americans and maimed thousands of others, instead of giving them health care.

The most laughable sight of all were Republicans denouncing a process of “backroom deals and secret bargains.” Because that’s YOUR standard operating procedure?, I yelled at the screen. You want to go back to square one and “craft a bill that all sides can agree on”? Where was your input when President Obama invited it? What were you doing about health care reform during the long years and decades you controlled the White House and Congress? Do I really think that if health care reform legislation had been voted down on Sunday the Republicans would have rolled up their sleeves and said, okay, let’s get to work? Of course not, those arrogant hypocrites. Now they’re going to activate a nationwide legal challenge that will last at least a year and cost millions of dollars more that could be going to health care (or the war, if you prefer). Just how is that in the best interest of Americans struggling with unemployment, foreclosures, and the lack of any medical insurance coverage?