Thursday, March 5, 2015

There is no logic to the hatred of Obamacare (except for racism.)


I have tried to make sense out of the GOP’s crusade against The Affordable Healthcare Act. I have tried to understand what they so dislike about making affordable health insurance available to all citizens.

I do not understand.

I do understand they do not like President Obama. I understand most of it is fueled by the fact that he is smarter than they are and he is black and that just makes them hate him to no end.  That racist reaction is easy to trace, especially in lower level GOP members who often speak without thinking when cameras and microphones are around. It can be traced to their sponsors and the right-wing lobbyists who fuel the fires.

But for an entire party to engage in a single-mind attack on a policy that is approved by the majority of Americans and is performing better than even the most strident supporters had hoped for; to try and repeal it dozens and dozens of times, to try every maneuver they can to strip its key portions away, I do not get it. Not when it is helping so many.

And now there are parties suing in the Supreme Court (after numerous lower courts have held in the government’s favor) claiming that they are being disenfranchised by its law and will suffer from its enforcement. They have stated they stand to lose a lot of money due to Obamacare. 

It just isn’t true.  The two sets of parties have no evidence of loss at all.

None.

And without that loss or chance of loss, there is no standing for their argument before the court. (A lower court already threw this out once due to the same argument and finding.) That’s like arguing the immigration statues with the citing that aliens are going to eat my sheep.  The fact that I do not own sheep, eliminates me from moving that argument forward in a court of law. It would have no standing.

It is something Justice Ginsburg argued back at the plaintiff’s lawyers yesterday and they had no recourse or response. They kind of stood there with their legal thumbs stuck of their puckered asses.

But even if the court continues to address the arguments being made in this case, I want to know why the vitriolic response from the right towards this law.  (It was, after all, a creation of the Heritage Foundation to begin with and they are a right-wing Republican think tank. It was designed to keep us away from a single-payer system, which they feared then first lady, Hillary Clinton, was going to try and push her husband to enact. At least with their system {and that of Obamacare} the free-enterprise system and insurance companies stay in the game. Government is not actually providing healthcare in the Affordable Healthcare Act.  It is only providing the rules by which people can get insurance from markets and the rules by which insurance must be made available.)

            But the cries of socialized medicine can be heard from every right wing nut job on radio all the ways to the halls of Congress. And it just is not so.

            So why the hatred for this legislation?  Why the great desire to take medical insurance protection away from so many?  What is the gain?  What is the end game?

            The GOP wants to embarrass the president and his party and bully them around a bit.  “Look, we defeated your key legislation and stuff that in your left-wing pipe and smoke it.”

            They act like petulant little children. They didn’t get to enact the legislation themselves, so they don’t want anyone to have it now. That is something people with small minds and mean hearts do.

            But then again, that is the definition of today’s GOP. Sad.  It used to be a grand ole party.  Today it is a reactionary bunch of windbags.

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