The invented Republican/ Foxy News talking point du jour is that the Democrats intend to ‘ram health care reform down our throats’ even though ‘the American people don’t want it.’
Bzzz. That’s just wrong! First of all, when there is a landslide triumph for a party as there was in November, 2008, for the victor to actually govern and legislate is not ‘ramming’ anything down anyone’s ‘throat.’ It is doing what the people asked you to do. Obama campaigned on this issue, and presumably that fact had not escaped the electorate’s notice.
Just so we don’t forget, if we sized the lower 48 states according to their population, this is what the Democratic victory looked like, according to cartophilia:
So it is that little tiny red thing that is talking about ‘ramming’ down ‘throats.’
Second, 80 percent of Americans in a recent ABC/Post poll want to prohibit limits on pre-existing conditions, and 72 percent want to impose an employer mandate. Some 63 percent favor some form of public health care reform. The same proportion, 63%, want president Obama to keep trying to pass a reform. A majority, 56%, want everyone to be covered. The allegation that the ‘public doesn’t want it’ is an artificial creation of millions of dollars in disinformation money purveyed by the pharmaceutical companies through the US Chamber of Commerce and their bought-and-paid-for congressmen and senators. If a pollster explains to a member of the public what is actually in the bill, Americans like most of the provisions, as Ezra Klein says.
Besides, all the Democrats want to implement (not ram) is the same thing every other advanced industrial society has, which is health care for all citizens. As it is, we pay more than the Netherlands or Germany or Sweden, but our health statistics are much worse than any of theirs.
As for ramming things down people’s throats, here is what the Republicans rammed down our throats during Cheney-Bush:
1. War on Iraq, costing over 4,000 American service lives, 31,000 wounded bad enough to go to hospital, many of them maimed for life, and costing over our lifetimes $3 trillion (which we don’t have). All based on outright lies.
2. Torture.
3. Warrantless wiretaps.
4. ‘Protest zones’ and arbitrary arrest of people peacefully assembled.
5. Further gutting of financial regulation, pushing the country’s economy off a cliff
6. Deep tax cuts for the superwealthy and de facto tax increases for the middle classes, passed by reconciliation
7. Unfunded programs, including wars, tax cuts and medicare changes, that created most of the current budget deficit and much of our current public debt, much of it passed by reconciliaton.
8. Virtual abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan for a concentration on Iraq, and slacking off on capturing the top al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership.
9. The gutting of environmental regulation and the surrender of the public to corporate polluters.
10. Bush’s ‘victory’ itself in 2000.
So suck it up, GOP. You really screwed us all over and messed up the country big time. All we want to do is have people’s children be able to see a doctor without it bankrupting the family. That’s your big complaint?
End/ (Not Continued)
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