Dear America,
This week, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, released his alternative to the American Health Care Act sent to The Senate by The House about six weeks ago. Yesterday, McConnell touted the bill as follows:
"Americans are no longer forced to buy insurance they don't need or can't afford."
But is that what he really meant? Consider this.
The purpose of health insurance is to make sure that when you need health care, you can get it no matter how much it costs. What other purpose could health insurance serve. So, if we can agree to that proposition, we can also agree that wherever the phrase "health insurance" appears in McConnell's self-serving panegyric, we can substitute the phrase "health care." Thus, if McConnell had been less cynical, and candid instead, his description of his bill would have read:
"Americans are no longer forced to buy health care they don't need or can't afford."
That sentence reveals the real motive behind the Republican effort to repeal what they themselves dubbed "Obamacare," a mistake they are about to pay for; that sentence and the history of their efforts to sabotage every effort the Democrats made when they had control of the federal government.
Since that appellation for the Affordable Care Act was introduced by them, the membership of the Republican Party has defamed the law and done everything it could to vitiate the law and render it a shell of what was intended, and they have often succeeded to the detriment of the American people. Concomitantly, the Republicans endeavored to vilify the Democrats as usurpers of states' rights and civil liberty while painting themselves as the benefactors to the people for fighting them. They have done this dirty work because instead of cooperating in making the Affordable Care Act a success, their real purpose was to regain hegemony in the federal government by making the Democrats...Barrack Obama in particular...look bad by whatever devious and dubious tactic might work because allowing success would be inimical to their return to power. They undermined the subsidies intended to make insurance affordable and the mandatory aspect of the Medicaid expansion in court, for example; as a consequence, some 31 states have opted for the expansion, which means that 19 states have not. They also did what they could to undermine the strategy of putting separate insurance exchanges in the states by refusing to create their own in Republican controlled states and outlawing the federally funded administrative assistance effort intended to help new insurance applicants to "navigate" the exchanges. All the while they were gravely intoning an intention to relieve the American people of this usurpation of their rights as they crooned that such was in their best interest because they could do better...but they never did until, they claim, now. But McConnell admitted the ugly truth yesterday. The American people weren't the intended beneficiaries of the Republican sabotage...at least not the vast majority of them. The American rich were intended to benefit so that their largess could trickle down on us like a cleansing rain. Unfortunately, it isn't rain that would trickle down on us under "Trumpcare."
The Republican alternative to Obamacare is really an attempt not to unburden the American people, but to take from those of us who "can't afford" healthcare what they have finally enjoyed for the past four to six years: necessary assistance in getting health care and the peace of mind that goes with it. So, since these letters are addressed to you, America, and since Mitch McConnell is an American, I want to address this suggestion to him with the rest of you as witnesses. Look in the mirror, Mitch. How can you stand to be that guy you see?
Your friend,
Mike
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