GOP should reclaim Obamacare
Of course, he wasn’t elected. There will be no Day One for Romney; no un-signing spectacle moments after a decaffeinated virgin daiquiri Inauguration. Romney lost the election. He only got (appropriately, and ominously) 47 percent of the popular vote and far fewer electoral votes than John Kerry.
Therefore, Obamacare is here to stay. It’s over.
But lo and behold: People like health care. Strangely enough, sickness equaling bankruptcy isn’t preferred but having affordable health insurance is. Being taken care of (instead of dropped) when faced with a disease is novel to some Americans and they’ve developed a taste for it. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, only 33 percent of Americans actually want to see Obamacare repealed. More Americans believe in Big Foot than Footing All Medical Bills.
Ah, the voice of reason in a sea of idiocy. Well said Tina. People do prefer health to sickness. Funny that the other side couldn't get that. Funny how they could try to bamboozle the entire country into believing huge insurance companies actually had our best interests at heart. I harken back to the talk I had with my physician a couple of weeks ago.
Said he: "Yeah, I'm worried about Obamacare. Our incomes are shrinking. Every time there's a cut in Medicare our revenues go down and our cost continue to go up. I don't know how long we'll be able to take Medicare patients and still keep the doors open."
Oh woe is me. HIS income is going down while costs are going up? My, oh my! Welcome to our world Mr. Physician. Our incomes haven't gone up in over a decade and the costs have continued to go up. Social Security checks are eaten alive by Part B [medical insurance] and our incomes are stationary. There you sit in your $100 Calvin Klein shirt, your $250 Haggar Slacks and your $400 Florsheim Shoes and bitch about how you can't keep your doors open! Do you really think you should garner any pity for your sorry state of affairs.
The AMA [American Medical Association] pored millions into Mitt Romney's campaign and lost it all when Obama got reelected. The AMA needs to realign its priorities and start paring down expectations. Doctors are only going to be able to afford 2-American Made automobiles to park in their Million Dollar 3-car garages and only one gardner, and maybe they'll have to take the kids to a babysitter rather than hiring a nanny. Again, welcome to the world wherein the rest of us live.
What ever happened to the credo, i.e., the Hippocratic Oath: [translation from the Greek]
I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant: 1st, do no harm...then...
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art - if they desire to learn it - without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this path and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely. may the opposite of all this be my lot.
I guess the ancient Greeks were a bit more ethical and moral than today's docs.
I don't begrudge people who want to make a good living, but doctors have been at the root of the medical problem for a long long time. When they started specializing, they relegated us patients to using two, three, four...maybe as many as a half dozen separate docs to handle one paitient's problem. Lab tests that are unnecessary [they will tell you that's because we keep suing them for malpractice and that's why the idiotic tests: CYA -- Cover your ass, they say]. Then they charge Medicare for all these minor unnecessary items and bitch because they aren't making enough money off their cheatin/lyin old people and Medicare has to take cuts cause America keeps jacking up prices at the hospital and doc's office [Really, $75 for an aspirin?].
I know I sound a bit jaded {A BIT...ya think}, but I get tired of rich people telling me I'm the cause of their financial problems. I heard enough of that during the election campaign. Mitt Romney and his cohorts and cronies got their just reward by a fed-up public and they deserved every bit of it. Losing never was more warranted. They belittled 47% of us who live on the edge and called us slackers and do-not-wanna-workers and thought we'd swallow that tripe. Welcome numbsculls to the real world where people actually think rather than taking the word of Tea Party-ers and Fox News.
It passed the House and the Senate. It was signed by the president. It was held up by the Supreme Court. The presidential candidate who ran against it lost. This is Obama’s America: Your private insurance company finally has to act ethically. Huzzah.
Here, here. It's about time.
So what’s next? Republicans ran a micro-targeting campaign aimed solely at old white southerners. The Grampa’s Old Party did their best to get fewer and fewer people to vote for them. While ostracizing “other” Americans, they ended up isolated themselves. Oostracized indeed. They failed to understand today's America. They didn't listen to the 'Fact Checkers' and they lost because they couldn't or wouldn't believe simple math or the 2010 Census. They implemented voter ID laws and tried to make it as difficult as possible to vote. (For them, but also in general.) They wanted fewer votes, believing less is more ... for Republicans. In the 2012 cycle, Republicans ran against everything popular with Americans — like birth control and taxing rich people. They shrunk their party down to the hardcore: the outer core left alone to cringe at what their former party had become (four words: front runner Michele Bachmann).
Here’s how Republicans can gain back their popularity: Admit Obamacare was their idea. Go on, just admit it. They renounced it once Obama embraced it. It’s now law. It’s popular. Reclaim what is (ahem) rightfully Republican!
Just admit the individual mandate was first proposed by Nixon, promoted by George H. W. Bush and fleshed out by the Heritage Foundation. It was the “conservative answer” to the health care issue — it was the “free-market solution” to reform. Admit Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich peddled the government mandate to purchase private health insurance as the Republican alternative to Hillarycare. Just ADMIT it was Mitt Romney who, when governor, implemented the individual mandate in his state. Just admit Romney said (in one of his many incarnations) the individual mandate would ward against any Massachusettsians being “free riders.”
It’s the law of the land. People like it. So own it. It’s yours anyway. Tort reform is the saddest answer ever to the “what would you do instead of the individual mandate?” question, because “that was OUR idea!!” is the real answer. It’s a sensible, pragmatic, pro-business solution and Republicans used to be all of those things.
The Party of Lincoln...who signed the Emancipation Proclamation...has fallen into the political bar-ditch. That's the problem right there. They stopped listening to people beginning with the election of His Majesty Sir Ronald Reagan and began believing only what they wanted to hear. No wonder they lost this election.
So be Republicans again: Tout Obamacare.
Then Republicans can run on it. Obamacare works? “See? I told you so!” they can tell people who still vote Republican. Individual mandate equals personal responsibility. Everyone pays their own way! Republican. Republican. Republican.
Let liberals whine about the public option. Let them pine for socialized medicine. Let them lament that private insurance won’t bring down costs enough. Let them finger-wag about all the issues we’ll have to face going forward. Republicans had a plan, the plan was put into place, Americans tell pollsters they like said plan — now conservatives should defend the Republican plan. Hey, what’s a little Etch-a-Sketch among friends, huh? Re-set? Re-launch? A little Romnesia goes a long way. Not all the way to the Oval Office, thankfully.
This was a great article. Tina Dupuy has hit several nails on the head. She said it best when she said "Romnesia goes a long way." Wake up Republicans or woe is you come the 2014 Congressional and Senatorial elections.
Tina Dupuy is editor-in-chief of TheContributor.com . She can be reached at tinadupuy@yahoo.com
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