"Adios!"
Ayn Rand supporter, Representative Paul Ryan
***
"Ayn Rand: Atheist Cornerstone of Tea Party Economics"
Excerpt: "You may have noticed that Republicans have been
struggling to come up with a credible alternative to the Affordable Care Act
once they repeal it. Why is it so hard? Because Obamacare WAS
the Republican alternative. It was the conservative-designed
mandate and subsidy approach... The ranks of the uninsured today are equal
to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi,
Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia,
Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware,
North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming."
***
"It seems to me there are very dangerous ambiguities about our democracy in its actual present condition. I wonder to what extent our ideals are now a front for organized selfishness and irresponsibility. If our affluent society ever breaks down and the facade is taken away, what are we going to have left?" Thomas Merton
GOP to the uninsured: Drop dead
The House is voting (again) Wednesday to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Meanwhile, six Republican governors (so far) say they won’t go along with the law’s planned Medicaid expansion for 4 million uninsured people in their states, even though the feds would pick up nearly all the tab.
5000+
Comments
Matt Miller
A senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center,” Miller writes a weekly column for The Post.
See the pattern here?
The Republican message to uninsured Americans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling couldn’t be clearer: You’re on your own.
The party may not have officially adopted the “let him die” policy of right-wing hecklers at that CNN primary debate, when Ron Paul was asked what should be done when an uninsured man shows up at the hospital. (Alan here: Consider the following videotape of Tea Bags cheering the death of America's uninsured: "Death Panels" as sacrament. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yva0VSN1_T4)
But as a practical matter, Republicans are in pretty unsavory territory. What other conclusion can we draw when Rick Perry, who presides over a state where one in four people lack health coverage, makes swaggering indifference to these Texans’ plight a point of sovereign pride?
Fifty million uninsured Americans would be the immediate casualties of the GOP’s “let them eat the emergency room” mentality. But all of us would be at risk. In America — alone among wealthy nations — everyone is a pink slip or job change or new illness away from finding they have lost coverage or are uninsurable.
This is the shameful reality behind the GOP’s rhetoric on health care. Republicans don’t want to spend a penny to insure the uninsured.
We know this because back during the original debate over Obamacare, the “boldest” GOP alternative would have extended coverage to 3 million of the 50 million uninsured, versus Obama’s 30 million (which still leaves us 20 million short of behaving like every other civilized nation, mind you).
It was not always thus. It’s striking to recall that back in 1992, George H.W. Bush put out a serious plan to cover 30 million of the then 35 million uninsured. (Democrats at the time rejected it, figuring they’d do the job on their own terms once Bill Clinton won. We know how that turned out.) So the erosion of Republican seriousness over two decades can be tracked with unusual precision. As the ranks of the uninsured have soared, the size of Republican compassion has shriveled.
Why?
Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave me the most convincing explanation not long before he died in 2003. Summing up the Republican mind on the issue, he told me, “Those folks never vote for us, and we have our priorities for the money.”
Like trillions more in tax cuts for the best-off Americans over the next decade.
You may have noticed that Republicans have been struggling to come up with a credible alternative to the Affordable Care Act once they repeal it. Why is it so hard? Because Obamacare WAS the Republican alternative. It was the conservative-designed mandate and subsidy approach. Republicans are in such an intellectual cul-de-sac on this issue that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) actually blasted Obamacare for being a sop to the president’s “cronies” in the insurance industry. Oy!
I feel like a broken record, but some truths bear repeating. Only in America could a Democratic president pass Mitt Romney’s health plan and fund it partly through John McCain’s best idea from the last campaign (taxing some employer-provided plans) and be branded a “socialist.”
In every other advanced nation, the idea that government has a central role in assuring basic health security was settled decades ago — a consensus that conservatives abroad embrace. Always remember: conservative icon Margaret Thatcher would have been chased from office if she had proposed anything as radically conservative as Obamacare — which relies on private docs to deliver the medicine, after all, and still leaves 20 million people uncovered.
Here’s what you should do, Mr. President. In the debates this fall, pull out a small, laminated card you’ve had made as a prop for this purpose. Then remind Mitt Romney that the ranks of the uninsured today are equal to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming.
Read that list slowly, Mr. President. Then ask your opponent: Would America turn its back on the citizens of these 25 states if everyone there lacked basic health coverage? That’s what we’ve been doing for decades. You knew it was right to act when you were governor of Massachusetts, Mitt. How can you pretend we don’t need to solve this for the nation? And how can you object with a straight face when your own pioneering plan was my model?
The president should also say he’d be happy to talk reform once Republicans offer a rival plan that the Congressional Budget Office certifies will cover 30 million people, as the Affordable Care Act does.
Today’s Republican Party won’t do it. They want the money for tax cuts. They don’t care.
Matt Miller, a co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center,” writes a weekly online column for The Post. His e-mail address is mattino2@gmail.com
Read more about this debate:
***
Canadian and American Satisfaction Levels With Respective Healthcare Systems
86% of Canadians would like to see further enhancements of their single payer system.
86% of Canadians would like to see further enhancements of their single payer system.
Less than half of Americans are happy with their healthcare "system."
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/86-of-canadians-want-to-strengthen.html
***
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with
which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more
idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are
at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient
times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound
up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only
unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is
theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer
any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes
evil.” Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas
Merton - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton
