Too stupid to vote???
Despite the fact that most Americans want Republicans to move on (pdf) and quit fighting a battle they’ve already lost, House Republicans spent the day debating the repeal the Affordable Care Act, a waste of time and taxpayer money given that it’ll never get out of the Senate much less be signed into law by President Obama. The vote tomorrow will be 31st time they’ve done this. In light of that, it’s worth having a look at what Obama-haters in the hinterlands are saying and thinking.
I was perusing the Letters to the Editor page at the Livingston County Press and Argus today and came across this letter, written by a person so detached from facts and reality that it’s almost insulting that they printed it.
This letter shows just exactly what we’re up against heading into the November election:
The Supreme Court recently ruled that Obamacare is constitutional only because its “individual mandate” is really a massive tax (primarily on the middle class). The American people better wake up because this 2,700 page health-care takeover not only will ruin our health-care system beyond repair but will devastate our economy at the same time.Most Americans have no clue how bad this legislation is. President Obama has lied repeatedly about the effects of the bill.
He said you can keep your present health plan — not true. He said you can keep your present doctor — not true. He said it would not increase taxes on the middle class — not true. He said it would not increase the federal deficit — not true. He said it would reduce the cost of health care — not true.
Do you see a pattern here?
Here is what is true. Obamacare cuts Medicare by $500 billion over 10 years, creates more than 100 new federal health-care bureaucracies to dictate every aspect of people’s personal health care, imposes 21 major tax increases during a recession that will be a massive job killer, uses taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and is causing individual health insurance premiums to soar.
According to a new survey of doctors, if Obamacare is fully implemented, 83 percent will consider leaving the practice of medicine. Sixty-one percent say it’s an affront to their ethics. Eighty-five percent say it destroys the doctor-patient relationship. In addition, Medicare actuaries predict that because of the cuts in Obamacare, 725 hospitals, 2,352 nursing homes and 1,587 home-health agencies will become unprofitable and may go out of business. Our private health-care system — the best in the world — will be ruined forever.
The American people only have one chance left — one chance — to repeal Obamacare. We have to vote Obama and the Democrats out of office in November and replace Obamacare with some commonsense reforms that will not ruin our health care and our economy.
Almost none of this is true. You WILL be able to keep your employer-paid health insurance. It DOES reduce the deficit. It WILL rein in the cost of healthcare. It WILL NOT increase taxes on the middle class.
The most laughable “statistic” is the one about 83% of doctors considering leaving the practice of quitting and the rest of the “statistics” in the third bolded paragraph. These facts lies come from a tea party group called the “Doctor Patient Medical Association” that has been described as “a group of crackpot malcontents”. You can read more about their ridiculous “survey” HERE.
But I had to look that up and, because this information is widely disseminated via email, Facebook, Twitter, and myriad right-wing, anti-Obama websites, and because it validates everything these low-information Obama-haters believe, they don’t challenge it. They simply repeat and amplify it.
This is what we are dealing with. We will never win this group of people over. It doesn’t matter that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. It doesn’t matter that over 250 million Americans are already benefiting from it. It doesn’t matter that insurance companies can’t rip us off any more and people with pre-existing conditions are guaranteed coverage.
None of that matters.
They hate liberals in general and President Obama even more. Nothing we will ever say to them will change that. Our focus must be two-fold: get our message to the folks in the middle that are persuadable and, even more importantly, get our supporters to the polls in numbers so large the ignorant tea party types won’t matter.
It’s GOTV, baby, from now until November. Are you in?
By the way, if you think the Obama administration is kidding around about this, read their statement (pdf) about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a bill sponsored by Eric Cantor (R-Stupidsville):
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
H.R. 6079 – Repealing the Affordable Care Act
(Rep. Cantor, R-VA)
The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 6079 because it would cost millions of hard-working middle class families the security of affordable health coverage and care they deserve. It would increase the deficit and detract from the work the Congress needs to do to focus on the economy and create jobs.Repealing the Affordable Care Act would mean that marketplaces where Americans could compare private insurance plans and get tax credits to purchase them would not open. Tax credits for small business owners who cover their employees would be eliminated. States would lose substantial Federal assistance under Medicaid to provide coverage for the neediest Americans.
But repealing the health care law would have implications far beyond the estimated 30 million Americans without insurance who would lose the health coverage they were going to receive.
More than 250 million Americans with insurance – private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid – would lose the benefits and protections they receive under the health care law. Insurance companies would be able to go back to some of their worst practices. They would no longer have to cover as dependents the 6.6 million young adults who have been able to sign up on their parents’ plans. They would be able to impose lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on coverage. They could go back to denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. And, they would likely turn away the nearly 70,000 Americans who had gained insurance through Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans, which would have to shut down. Insurance companies would no longer be held accountable for double-digit premium increases. Strict rules that prevent insurance companies from spending too much on administrative costs or CEO bonuses would be erased.
Reforms that strengthen Medicare’s long-term finances would also be repealed. Seniors would lose the more generous prescription drug coverage provided under the health care law, as well as free preventive care. And Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would become insolvent up to eight years earlier.
Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office indicate that repealing the health care law would add more than $100 billion to the deficit over the next decade, and more than $1 trillion in the following decade.
The last thing the Congress should do is refight old political battles and take a massive step backward by repealing basic protections that provide security for the middle class. Right now, the Congress needs to work together to focus on the economy and creating jobs. Congress should act on the President’s concrete plans to create an economy built to last by reducing the deficit in a balanced way and investing in education, clean energy, innovation, and infrastructure.
If the President were presented with H.R. 6079, he would veto it.
[CC photo credit: BJ Bumgarner | Flickr]
