Despite 40 failures to repeal Obamacare, Ted Cruz,one of the most socially insensitive members of Congress, declared that the Congress is deadly afraid to abolish the law.
He wants Congress to unite against it or the public to weigh in against it.
And he dares to suggest that this can happen, a futile hope, in light of the fact that, in case you haven’t noticed, there has not been any evidence of an alternate plan in sight.
Despite the millions of dollars spent by lobbyists for special interests that want to keep the enormous profits earned by private insurers, drug manufacturers and medical device manufacturers, Obamacare is already proving that money is already being saved by improvements in the system and the public is now enjoying safeguards included in the law. And the more people are able to acquire coverage, the more public support it will retain.
The critics have loads of money to spread lies against the aim to insure our entire population and they continue to poison the well.
Health care should not be a business; in every industrialized nation in the world except the US, everyone has access to affordable care. The meanness of opponents to this in this country is shameful.
Here are some of the lies and myths that we are urged to believe:
1 – Health care in America is already the best in the world. Sure, if you have the money to pay for the best you can get it, but for most part, we have a system that is underperforming and is too expensive. The best systems, that get best overall results, are in Britain, the Netherlands and New Zealand, and serve everyone.
2 – Sarah Palin’s nonsense about death panels. The only thing the laws adds is funding for physicians to speak to families about the best ways to deal with serious illnesses. Before the law, doctors could not be paid for the time spent to counsel families. This cruel distortion of a humane provision for services is so typical of many attempts to frighten people.
3 – The Affordable Health Care Act would be a job killer, ostensibly because of efficiencies. On the contrary, insuring and caring for all the people would create huge numbers of good jobs to implement a universal system.
4 – Implementation of the law would add to the deficit. Hogwash! On the contrary, reduction of the waste in our current system with all its inefficiencies in delivery of services, its duplications, its wasteful use of taxpayer money to dispense services with very poor planning, the cost to the economy of caring for the sickest because of the lack of preventive care is what could ultimately give us savings.
5 – And do you recall Republicans yelling about taking money from Medicare that could be used elsewhere because of savings and calling it destruction of Medicare. Hypocrisy! Which party is for the end of Medicare? Could it be the same Republicans?
6 – Obamacare would provide care for undocumented aliens. Not so!
7 – One of the silliest objections was that the bill was so long. It is long because special interests kept adding provisions that add onerous complications that were not in the bill originally presented to the House by Rep. John Conyers, HR 676. And, in fact, there are strong doubts that the objectors have ever read the entire bill anyway. Of course, it is quite true that many laws, for example, the Internal Revenue Code is humongous by comparison. And the special interests, who gain much from the existence of that code and its exemptions for them, don’t ever seem to object to those tax breaks.
If you have read this far, I hope it is in the interest of fighting the standards of the truly heartless of some conservatives. They cannot see that a great nation must be judged by what it does for the least among us.
What master are some of the opponents serving?
Esther Confino
New Hyde Park
