Republicans recently attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act and Patient Protection law for the 40th time, but why?
Because it gives women access to preventive health services and makes it illegal to charge women different rates than men?
Gives seniors access to cheaper drugs, free preventive care, and reforms Medicare Advantage?
Goes after waste and fraud in Medicare?
Protects the 1-2 Americans who have a pre-existing condition?
Reduces the growth in national healthcare spending?
Or perhaps it’s because 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to medical bills, and one of the many ways in which this law changes that is the abolishment of lifetime caps on life-saving measures and mandates that you pay no more than 8% of your annual income on health insurance? Maybe it’s because Republicans have an affinity toward the indefinite sickening and bankrupting of Americans?
• Takes measures to prevent all types of discrimination in regards to your right to health care, including discrimination based on gender, income, and health issues.
• Reforms and expands Medicaid to an estimated 15 million of our nation’s poorest. That’s 6.1 million less than the last estimate due to States opting-out out of providing coverage, despite 100% federal funding for the first 3 years and 90% thereafter.
• Provides $20 billion in tax credits for as many as 4 million Small Businesses to offset the cost of purchasing insurance on the Health Insurance Exchanges.
• Improves community health care centers.
• Prevents “price gauging” by hospitals.
Without healthcare reform America will continue to suffer the consequences of a health care system controlled by private companies, whose bottom line is money and not health.
That last part is telling. How many presidents do we know of who signed off on policy and backed it up with statements that effectively kick open the doors of health insurance corporations and pumps a shotgun in the name of taking back our freedom and dignity?
Last month, Republicans Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn, as government officials, pressured the NFL to back out of a tentative public service agreement that would have helped educate the public on the benefits of the ACA, which, oddly enough, is the type of government interference, or threat of government retaliation in the private sector that Republicans are always accusing this administration of, portraying them in the mainstream press as nothing short of unAmerican scoundrels. There is, officially, no moral, or ethical compass left in the GOP.
So, as Republicans continue to purposefully keep America in the dark, ignorant of the importance of this law, although patience seems to be winning the day, despite media efforts to muddy the debate and allow the GOP to go on virtually unobstructed in their intellectually-violent endeavors, it behooves the GOP to continue to threaten to shut down government over implementation of this law because when it’s all said and done, this is the clearest path we’ve ever had to realizing universal healthcare in this country. Can’t have that.