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Health & Fitness

A View from Left Field- Romneycare, Two Thumbs Up "Sez" the Supreme Court

Romney undrmines his own triumph.

Thank you Mitt Romney for providing the model for a national healthcare system that will bring affordable and expanded medical coverage to millions of Americans.  Mitt, I can’t understand why you hide from this honor, except for the fact that you’re trying to appeal to short sighted Republicans intent on thrusting our country back into the 19th Century.  Stop genuflecting to tea party extremists whose only goal is to diminish life for most Americans so that one percent at the top has it all.

The Affordable Healthcare Act, like your model in Massachusetts, and signed into law by President Obama offers many benefits to rank and file Americans.  The President achieved a national feat that Republicans and Democrats alike going back to President Roosevelt failed to do. 

Families, hard pressed to meet the obligations of mounting college tuition fees, can now catch their breath.  Obama’s medical act allows adult children up to 26 year of age to remain on their family heath plan.  What a relief this will provide! Another striking advantage comes into play for persons with pre-existing conditions.  No longer will insurance companies be allowed to cherry pick for healthy applicants while excluding infirmed patients who have the most need for their services.  Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege for all Americans.  Most humane societies subscribe to that principle.  I wonder why our country continues to resist a concept so obvious to the rest of the civilized world.

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One of the questioning issues centered on whether The Affordable Healthcare Act was a tax or not.  Who cares?  Like the word liberal or progressive, right wing politics has given the term taxes an onerous characterization.  Republican Congressmen en masse have gone so far as to sign pledges not to raise taxes.  While this goes a long way toward narrowing their objectivity, it potentially positions them to be in direct conflict with their constituencies too.   

We have all come to expect goods and services from our government.  Who or what will pay for them, if not our taxes?  Today’s tax rates for persons and businesses alike are historically low.  So low in fact that government can’t fund some of our elementary needs. For you proponents of lowering taxes, how would you like private toll roads, a private post office, a Social Security system tied to the volatility of the stock market, better yet no Social Security or Medicare at all and privately funded neighborhood police and fire departments?  These lunatic ideas have been shopped and field tested before. They just don’t work or make us a better society.

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Finally, I like to say something nice about the Supreme Court.  The way things were going, I never thought I’d be able to respect them in my lifetime.  Beginning  with the court stealing the 2000 Election up to Citizen’s United, giving businesses the status of people, my hope for fairness had dissipated.  Well, my hat’s office off to Chief Justice Roberts.  He demonstrated that responsible judgment can take precedence over politics, and for that he should be commended. 

Now the whole affair comes full circle back into Romney’s corner.    He could be gloating today with his visionary Massachusetts healthcare program.  Instead he regurgitates self serving homilies that lack substance and have no other aim but to disparage President Obama.  How low will the “Mitt-ster” descend in his desperate attempt to court favor with neo-cons and far right voters.  If he wants to get elected, somewhere along the line he’s going to have to stand for something.  You know develop a backbone!  When will he ever learn?

 

 

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