September 20, 2013 by Taylor Sappington
What Republicans Just Aren’t Getting About Health Care
They’re at it again, naturally…Radical Tea Party and Republican Congressmen and women are attempting to hold the debt limit hostage if their demands to defund ObamaCare are not met. This, being the 42nd attempt to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act from this Congress.
With the extraordinarily out of touch disregard oozing from the walls of Capitol Hill once again, I could not help but to feel astounded as the news rolled out from the infamously bronze Speaker Boehner’s office. My astonishment was unexpected, as we have all listened to the cold rhetoric preaching corporate welfare for years and my surprise should have dulled. But I had come to a haltingly obvious realization: these guys just do not get it.
They are not even in the general vicinity of understanding why this bill, and health reform in general is so urgently needed. How could they? According to a CNN study, the average net worth of a Republican Congress member is $1,000,000; their bank accounts have more zeros than most families have bedrooms. The richest man in Congress is Darrel Issa (R) who owns $450,000,000 and has a criminal past. Less than 2% of congress has ever been considered “Working Class” in their lifetimes. The top five private jet users are all Republican. In other words, these tea partiers are some of the richest and most out of touch Americans our country has to offer and they are on stage claiming to represent the 99% of us who have to manage debt, falling wages, and rising prices.
With my family’s own brush with poverty as my single mom lost her job with two children, I have the personal experience to describe a life raised in financial struggle. Yesterday however, It almost cracked my head to contemplate the deep impoverishment that healthcare costs force on people everywhere. Knowing the grinding nature of debt and bills, I deeply empathize with families who unknowingly grab the mail that contains a $25,000 hospital bill. Or the crushing feeling that a retired couple must sense as their 6 figure hospital debt must be serviced by their meek social security benefits. Or tragically, the sinking devastation a mother must collapse under when she finds out preventative care could’ve detected her illness before it was too late, sparing her children a life of hardship. The Tea Party House of Reps claims she is allowed emergency care out of the goodness of their hearts. Why should she need health insurance that might cover regular checkups?
This Congress incessantly pontificates down to our health wasteland claiming to stand for freedom and liberty. Working their 2 day work week and retaining golden benefits and pay, they reveal their lack of understanding with every word that stumbles out of their talking point filled mouths. Forty two attempts at repealing Obama care? Calling this reform “ObamaCare” as if it is an insult? They speak with a shocked aura of incredulousness. As if they are uncovering a great scandal for us. Nothing could be further removed from reality. Americans voted as a majority twice for the Obama administration to pass and enforce a health care bill. Families that have been economically crippled for a lifetime by their health care bills spoke loud and clear. I trudged through snow, rain, cold, hot, wind, mud, and mean dogs to canvass, inform, and gain supporters for ObamaCare. Millions of volunteers across the country did even more as campaign staffers like myself got their back to form one of the largest grassroots efforts in political history in 2012.
We knew exactly what was in the bill. It was built to cut costs and cover millions of poor folks who could not otherwise get coverage. In fact, the GOP seems to be working only themselves up in this frenzy with their lies and misinformation about the bill. Nobody else is following the obsessive effort to defund the law because we support it. We fought for it. And we’ll be damned if we are about to give up the effort to a wealthy, out-of-touch Congress that can’t even force themselves to work 5 days a week. They just don’t get it….
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