Tuesday, March 27, 2012

To Your Health!

I'm sure this will be a toast lifted by Republicans all over the land to the health insurance companies if the Supreme Court invalidates the ACA. As the media seems to think it will after parsing the expressions, raised eyebrows, and questions of the Court. Today the justices heard arguments on the so-called individual mandate, the requirement that everyone in America buy health insurance or pay a penalty. This is the part of the law that drives the Right particularly bananas. Dictatorial powers by the government, a nefarious plot by the president to deprive people of their freedoms, a trampling of the rights of the people, etc., etc. But the very idea, the notion itself, is a product of the Heritage foundation, and it's been endorsed by people like Newt Gingrich. So it's just politics once more. If Obama favored it, the Republicans are against it. And naturally they've been successful in stirring up the ignorant masses, who overwhelmingly approve individual provisions of the law, but damn it out of hand as a whole.

All I have to say about this is this: I cannot believe that in the first part of the 21s century, a civilized nation would be without universal health care. It's even less credible that a country would jettison a health care plan already in effect and replace it with . . . what? The mess we had before? Please! Some Democrats think it would be politically advantageous for the law to be overturned by a conservative Republican court. I'd just as soon not even have to find out.

1 comment:

Montag said...

If it be overturned, if the implementation be blocked, then you will be roused as a modern day Edmund Ruffin, and denounce that blockage, that ideological Fort Sumter that sticks in the craw of free men!

(this metaphor needs a bit of work yet.)