Defying the Law of the Land
If you're a student of history, it's most reminiscent of Southern defiance of Brown v. Board of Education, the historic 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated schools based on race.
Die-hard Southern states resorted to every legal trick imaginable to avoid compliance, including shutting down public schools and reopening them as all-white private academies.
The comparison may be particularly apt since one of the major achievements of the Affordable Care Act is to move the United States toward near-universal health care, providing insurance to 30 million previously uninsured, low-income Americans, including 340,000 in Wisconsin.
Needless to say, because of the economic disparities this country still perpetuates, a large proportion of those at the bottom without health care are black and brown.
But in Scott Walker's world, all those Wisconsinites gaining health coverage aren't his concern.
Neither are an estimated million people in Wisconsin with pre-existing conditions who could be denied coverage by insurance companies before the law was passed.
It also affects those who previously could lose their insurance when they got sick, reached a lifetime limit on benefits or lost their jobs—and all those seniors who had to pay thousands of dollars every year when they fell into Medicare's “doughnut hole” of prescription drug coverage.
Dismissing all the law's provisions eliminating those devastating flaws in the nation's health care system, Walker instead invented transparently fallacious arguments against expanding and improving health care.
Without any facts to support him, Walker claimed the law “would require the majority of people in Wisconsin to pay more money for less health care” and “reduce access for those truly in need of assistance.”
The media's unchallenged reporting of such dishonest claims demonstrates how Republicans succeeded in spreading complete fabrications about government “death panels” plotting to exterminate senior citizens and a “socialist takeover” of America.
Poor journalism is responsible for much of the negative public opinion toward the health care reform law. After flooding the nation with unsubstantiated Republican falsehoods against the law, commentators now criticize President Barack Obama for failing to adequately explain the law's positive benefits.
Perhaps the biggest boost for the law going into the November elections was the president's surprise victory after the media widely predicted the court would strike down the reform sought by multiple presidents, Democrat and Republican, since Theodore Roosevelt.
Sometimes you don't know what you've got until you almost lose it. Many people are now hearing for the first time all the health care benefits nearly killed by brazen Republican partisans on the court.
And Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, is going into absurd contortions trying to explain why he wants to destroy national health care reform modeled after the extremely popular law he passed as governor of Massachusetts.
“On my first day in office, I vow to deny health care to 30 million Americans” does not sound like a winning Romney campaign message.
Wrong Side of History
Walker and other Republican governors continuing to battle the law of the land are like those clueless Japanese soldiers on isolated Pacific islands who didn't know World War II was over and kept fighting into the 1970s.
Walker turned down a $38 million federal grant to help set up a state “health care exchange,” actually a competitive free market where insurance companies offer their best plans to people buying coverage on their own.
Walker and Dennis Smith, his health secretary, are right-wing ideologues viscerally opposed to government health services for poor people. That's why they're expected to turn down the law's expansion of Medicaid.
That's an important provision that could cover nearly half of the 30 million additional Americans receiving health insurance.
For most states it's too good a deal to pass up. The federal government would pick up all of the cost for three years and no less than 90% after that. But Walker seems to enjoy turning down federal money that benefits Wisconsin people he doesn't like.
We're all fortunate there are still conservatives who aren't nearly as petty and shortsighted as Walker and some of the other Republican governors.
The media appeared baffled as to why Chief Justice John Roberts, a staunch conservative, would provide the swing vote to uphold the president's health care reform.
Why should anyone be surprised Roberts might try to honestly follow the Constitution and be on the right side of history? But there's also the fact that Roberts has a pre-existing condition, a form of epilepsy.
Before health care reform, if Roberts weren't fortunate enough to have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, he wouldn't have been able to buy private health insurance.
Wow. You are amazingly dumb.
People of the lower classes choose to forego buying health insurance (or even auto insurance) because the trade-off is to not buy the basics like food, energy, cholera-free water and sewer, decent shelter, or access to information like newspaper, internet, tv-channels (information required to make an intelligent vote).
Government healthcare is not FORCING abortions or birth control to be used by poor people, only forcing it to be made available as an option to control their costs of living life. It is you Tpublicans that would like to force these people to stop making more welfare babies. (Or you want to breed vast numbers of "servants" and "concubines" to work "real cheap" in your households)
People who want natonal health care want others to pick up the tab. All this crap about the federal government picking up the tab is bull crap. Taxpayers will be picking up the tab. Then what are you going to do when you go to your doctor and the waiting room is full of poor people? And what if your doctor says sorry WE DON'T ACCEPT GOVERNMENT HEALTH INSURNCE? My doctor told me that she no longer accepts patients with government insurance because they are not as profitable. Treating people with government insurance is a waste of her time. Then you have to go see some doctor who got his degree is the Carribean, wait all day with the unwashed who's time is not as valuable as yours.
aCONnymous: Once again assssuming you speak for everyone. You don't speak for other doctors either. Plenty of medical providers that do accept medicare and medicaide.
So chock full of blather and CONservative memes/low-effort "thinking." Nope, noone forcing anyone to get an abortion nor to buy birth control. Yes, higher pregnancy rate and infant mortality rate among the uninsured, that can't afford to care for their children like people that are well-off. Health insurance is usually provided for by an employer, not someone who goes out an buys it. In case you haven't noticed, unemployment, though improving is high, and companies complain about the added cost to them.
Have another beer and try talking out of the other end. Too bad you can't figure out how ACA will help to reduce your insurance premiums. Maybe you should return the benefits as a protest.
There are 168 hours in a week, and a person who is "living a life worth living" needs at least 2 people at his/her beck and call at all times. That means 1 person needs 8 people "who do not have a life" to serve them. You want to leave this "personal assistant" with a 40 hour work week so they are not too tired to serve, so you need a lot of them. What does this mean? Means only 1 out of 9 people are to have a good life, and the other 8 to not have a good life. The only way to make that happen is if that 1 who is worthwhile has absolute political power, and the other 8 do not. -- Can't do it if 1 or more of those 8 members of the designated servant class have a vote. -- Are we there yet? OR can we call it "Get the black man out of the white house (colored people out of positions of power and wealth), and then we will work on recovery".
Let's get close to the real subject... killing this redistribution of employed people's tax dollars to take care of those who do not pay taxes, (especially if they are "designated" to not have a job.)
Look at what is going on over in Europe, which of those nations do we want to be like? We seem to like England and it's Royal Family, they are not part of the Euro-Zone. They have an understanding that "class matters" just like we know, they are seeing that attempts at equality just plain do not work, both in England and in the Euro Zone. Where they differ is that their Middle Class is trying to do upper class things like going to the opera or hunt fox on private lands, they leave behind those working class hooligans that go to the soccer games or hunt on public lands. Here in America, to be Middle Class does not mean going to the opera, it means being able to go to even more sports arenas in ever nicer box seats.
There was a talk radio program this morning on what kinds of society leave the most people "feeling happy" about their life. Hands down, it is the SOCIALIST countries of Europe. They are happy because they know that they will be covered if the company they work at fails, or if they get sick. They do not feel the desperation that we do, the fear of not being able to survive if bad luck happens. The price they pay is higher taxes ON THOSE WHO WORK, it covers for when people cannot work, never mind who CHOOSE not to work like some here repeat over and over again. Of course, they can get away with covering those who are not pulling their own weight because these socialist societies are relatively all the same ethnic group, their poor are just like their workers who pay taxes. Note that the European nations that are not doing well have always been those who have a mix of ethnic groups, ones that refuse to get along with each other, be it religious or racist reasons. That's also how our 2 World Wars got started, unresolvable differences between cultures in those nations. (WW1:Yugoslav assassinates Austrian leader. WW2: Hitler abolishes democracy, his racially motivated Nazi forces invade Poland, and Japan's invasion of China)
Here is an important point... we are now the most unhealthy rich country in the world. Being the most expensive healthcare in the world is not making us healthier. Policies that provide healthcare only to those who can pay full price just drives the prices higher. Is that what we want to continue? Too expensive you say?
Why is it that we have no problem taking 20% of income and benefits away from teachers making 50,000 or even 100,000 a year (still makes them "lower middle class"), but have a huge problem taking 3% more taxes from a person making a million dollars? Are you saying that the country was not doing well under the Nixon and Ford administrations, when the taxes on the top rich was 70% of income over $200K, not Reagan-H.Bush's top rate of 28% of income over $32K? How about Clinton's top rate of 40% of income over $288K? But the current W.Bush top rate of 35% of income over $350K is way too much?
A fairly recent Gallup Poll on happiness: "How free are you to live the life you choose?" Happiness is higher in the northern European "nanny states", where a worker can pursue the meaningful and rewarding job that satisfies them rather than hated job that is needed to pay the ever-increasing bills.
Even Europe with it's Austerity movement, desired spending cut-backs: No evidence that it works. The problem is when the high-taxed, socialist countries are being asked to pay for the failures of the low-tax countries. There is no complaint when the high taxes of a nanny-state is taking care of it's own people.
How can corporations who are making record profits today be claiming we need more austerity, dropping the costs that the profitable are paying to the government that allow the government to keep the country profitable? "You need to allow my special interest business segment to be more profitable, so I can afford to buy out and control another segment that stands in my way of even more profit." Hypothetical examples like "stop my customers from spending on healthcare so people can buy more cars", or "stop them from spending on local property taxes, so they can spend more on building new houses, or remodeling their old houses, getting more furniture and appliances."
I don't mind helping people who can't work. Its the one's who can work I don't want to help. Jesus said what you do the the least of us, you do to me. If Jesus lost his job would you give him Welfare and Food Stamps? Tell him to lay in a hammock and eat Ding Dongs? No you would provide him is basic nutrition to live and offer him a job serving fellow man. Jesus wants us to help those in need. But not spoil them rotten giving them every thing they want.
I doubt Jesus would want us throwing lavish birthday parties for children using Food Stamps. No, he'd want it to be a teaching moment to those poor children that being poor should not be celebrated. Poor children should be taught that they are only alive by the grace of god and they should give thanks for their basic daily bread. That should be what is celebrated.