Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) goes into effect on January 1 and Republican politicians and their pundits are wining—crying—and dragging their feet trying to ridicule and stop the new reforms. While a few businesses and wealthier workers may have to pay slightly more for insurance, Republicans act as if the entire US healthcare system will implode when the full program finally goes into effect.
US Representative Mike Pompeo—Republican from Kansas, has chimed in with his own Alarmist attacks on Obamacare. He has released a statement that says;
A “train wreck.” That’s the word we have come to identify as the best way to describe the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. In just a few short weeks, the health care exchanges are supposed to “go live,” and I, and you, and most everyone else we know, will be impacted by government-run insurance exchanges. But the Wall Street Journal reports what we already knew: The exchanges are just not ready for primetime.
This is dangerous—literally dangerous—for Kansans, as this law will make it more difficult for Kansas health care providers like those in Pratt, Kiowa, and Comanche, more difficult for people in rural and suburban areas to get the care they need, and it will even drive up costs, as we’ve already seen in California. Actually Obamacare may actually help insurance companies in the long run as people, who presently don’t have insurance, will be forced to buy it. It also helps the working poor who can’t get or afford health insurance and those with preconditions who otherwise can’t get it. Obamacare is not the ideal system. We need a universal health care. Insurance companies are and have always been paid to find ways to keep people from getting the health care they need. They are parasites and there is no need for them, other than for the huge profits they make for their stock holders.
For the Tea Party Republicans this is just one more battle in their war on poor people. They are so dedicated to preserving huge corporation’s profits that they want to let poor people die rather than allow a relatively mild reform to the US health care system. In the industrialized first world, the US has the very worst health care system in the world.
According to PBS;
How much is good health care worth to you? $8,233 per year? That's how much the U.S. spends per person.
Worth it?
That figure is more than two-and-a-half times more than most developed nations in the world, including relatively rich European countries like France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. On a more global scale, it means U.S. health care costs now eat up 17.6 percent of GDP.
And this country violates human rights of the poor and lower-income working people who now die early from a lack of health care. In a report from Columbia University;
How many U.S. deaths are caused by poverty, low levels of education and other social factors? A new study finds that the numbers are in the same range as deaths from heart attacks and stroke...
The investigators found that approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2000 were attributable to low levels of education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty.
Overall, 4.5% of U.S. deaths were found to be attributable to poverty—midway between previous estimates of 6% and 2.3%. However the risks associated with both poverty and low education were higher for individuals aged 25 to 64 than for those 65 or older. And despite all of this, politicians such as Pompeo, are determined to derail this badly needed reform;
I voted to defund Obamacare, but I need your voice to emphasize why this is so crucial for Kansas. It will be a long slog, but I’m confident that together, we can make a difference. So the fight against Obamacare is a very real war on poor US citizens and it comes with real casualties and real death. Politicians in the US just don’t put any value on the lives of poor or lower income people. People need to realize this is a life or death issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment