Quality healthcare is a human right. Quality healthcare is a civil right in a just society, in any society! We the people must abolish any and all healthcare systems with profit as the primary motivating goal.
Republicans attempt to perpetrate a deceptive swindle in their Health(don’t)Care bills in the House and Senate. These Health(don’t)Care bills have nothing to do with health at all. They function as political cover to grant massive tax breaks to the rich.
The Republican Party is proud to stand up for the rights of the unborn and believe all Americans have an unalienable right to life as stated in The Declaration of Independence; Republican leadership has led the effort to prohibit partial-birth abortion and permitted States to extend healthcare coverage to children before birth…. —Republican Party Official “Family Values Pro-Life” Platform
Rather than standing under their banner of “Right to life!,” in reality they march in lockstep to the charge of “Right to life until birth. After that, you’re on your own!”
Contrary to having concern for “every human being,” their interest stops at “every unborn human being.” This reality was clearly apparent as the details of last year’s iteration of their draconian so-called “American Health Care Act” passed the House in 2017.
The bill eliminated the public mandate, granted states and insurance companies federal waivers to charge people with pre-existing medical conditions much higher rates than other customers, substantially increased prices to older people, and disregarded the mandate to cover specified services like pregnancy care.
It cut Medicaid programs for low-income people, while allowing states to enact work requirements on Medicaid recipients. Oh, and let us not forget that the bill eliminated tax increases on the rich and super-rich as well as on the health industry.
Just hours after House Republicans passed the bill, meeting publicly in New York City with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump praised Australia for having a “better health care than we do.”
Well, Donald, you might want to take note that Australia initiated a successful government-sponsored single-payer health care system, which your party’s philosophy of “that government is best that governs least [and preferably not at all]” will never accept. But why not?
Reported by the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, the U.S. ranks last in terms of life expectancy and first related to disease burden compared with other so-called “developed” countries, including Australia. We spend about $8,745 per capita on health care, compared with Australia’s $3,997 per person. If the Senate had actually succumbed to pass the House version (which it did not thanks to the courage of John McCain) these tragic statistics would have only worsened.
I felt physically disgusted watching House Republicans standing with Trump and Pence smiling smugly in the White House Rose Garden lining up taking a figurative victory lap immediately after passing the bill. The irony was stark, glaring, and utterly cynical.
On my TV screen I watched what I imagined as white, middle-aged, rich, and primarily male former frat boys trying to relive their salad days high-fiving above kegs of freely-flowing beer and wearing togas while trying to bed the hot sorority girls, all as they, in all likelihood, are attempting to take away health care insurance from what the Congressional Budget Office estimated as 24 million people by 2026 in the first version of the bill. This second version portended even more dire consequences.
Hey, but originally they wrote into the bill that Congress members would be exempt from its provisions, but they ultimately deleted that measure owing to their obvious hypocrisy. But never mind. Party on, party on. The voters spoke by giving control of the House back to the Democrats.
Taking a victory lap following the vote House vote last year, Vice President Pence thanked all the “principled lawmakers” for their support in the bill’s passage.
Republicans tout their scams as establishing “freedom of choice” to “freedom-loving” individuals while granting “enhanced rights” to states.
Translated from doublespeak to realspeak: “freedom of choice” means that with the bill’s elimination of a public mandate, individuals can choose not to purchase health care insurance, forgo preventative medicine, develop catastrophic ailments, and die in the street if they so choose, or they can go to a hospital emergency room for their primary care while other tax payers pick up the tab. Freedom?
In the final analysis, Republicans’ “liberty” and “freedom” perpetuates their vicious self-serving fraud on the people, except for the upper 10% in the ever-growing economic divide.
I am disgusted when politicians discuss destroying our current modest healthcare system to grant people “freedom of choice.” How very hypocritical!
- A free people have guarantees to go to a quality healthcare provider for preventative care without having to choose between care and food.
- A free people have guarantees to go to a quality healthcare provider for ailments big and small without having to choose between care or paying for housing.
- A free people have guarantees to go to a quality healthcare provider for treatment of catastrophic ailments without having to choose between care and having sufficient funds for retirement or for sending their children to school.
- A free people have guarantees to quality healthcare no matter their station in life, no matter their geographic location, no matter their physical and mental condition, no matter their social identities, no matter what!
The Republicans’ ultimate purpose is not to guarantee universal healthcare, but instead, to shrink substantially the size of government; to end governmental regulation of the private sector; to privatize state and federal governmental services, industries, and institutions including healthcare and education; to permanently incorporate across-the-board non-progressive marginal tax rates; to ensure market-driven unfettered “free market” economies.
Back in the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign at the CNN-Tea Party-sponsored Republican presidential candidates’ debate in Florida the debate facilitator, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, asked then presidential candidate Ron Paul the hypothetical question of what we as a society should do in the case of a 30-year-old man who chooses not to purchase health insurance, and later develops a serious life-threatening disease. Before Paul had a chance to answer Blitzer’s question, a number of audience members shouted “Let him die! Let him die!”
Unfortunately, a Texas federal court judge might have ultimately accomplished what Congressional Republicans could not by declaring the individual mandate of the ACA unconstitutional, which if confirmed by higher courts, will effectively kill the law.
Is this the image of our country we want to continue projecting around the world? Is this the type of country “we the people” were promised? Is this the type of country in which “we the people” want to live?
As destructive and as freedom-killing as the political and theocratic right would have us believe, according to the World English Dictionary, socialism involves “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole,” where each of us has a stake and advances in the success of our collective economy.
No country in the world today functions as a fully socialist state, but rather, some of the most successful economies combine elements of capitalism with socialism to create greater degrees of equity and lesser disparities between the rich, the poor, and those on the continuum in between.
For those who thrust the term “socialist” as a curse word, if a Socialist is one who advocates for a governmental single-payer quality universal healthcare, then we should all be Democratic Socialists!
If a socialist is one who demands that our country protects and enhances our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid safety nets, then we should all be Democratic Socialists!
If the rich and super rich must pay higher taxes, then so be it! If we must reduce our ridiculously high annual military budgets, then so be it! If we are going to deny Trump his irresponsible and unnecessary border wall, then so be it!
We must get our policy priorities in order. We the people must fight for each and everyone’s right to quality healthcare. We must divorce healthcare from the corporate profit motive and marry it to a government-sponsored single-payer system for all the people!
Let the groundswell. Let the volcanoes erupt. Let the clouds crash with thunder. Let the people rise, fists held high, voices ringing, chanting, singing, demanding, announcing:
HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT! HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT! HEALTHCARE IS A RIGHT!
Republicans be damned! We need an economic revolution!
◊♦◊
Are you a first-time contributor to The Good Men Project? Submit here:
◊♦◊
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project, please join us as a Premium Member, today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all-access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class, and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group, and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock