My sister and her husband took care of my parents in their home for as long as they were able until my Mother’s condition required 24 hour care. My mother spent her final two years in a nursing facility. After she exhausted her savings, her bill was paid by Medicaid. If the Republicans pass the AHCA in the House today, they will have completed the first step in destroying Medicaid.
The cruelty of the Republican budget and health care plan is not conservative but rather a desire to punish. It is not thoughtful but rather an expression of Ayn Randian contempt. It is theological not political for it is a demonstration of a pursuit of Darwinian purity. Both are designs formulated by pretend tough guys who wish to demolish any program that does not feed the money machine.
Meanwhile, these same Congressmen and women enjoy a superb HC package provided by the Government.
Think about that.
The AHCA will transfer 600 billion dollars from those in need back to the wealthy. That is the bottom line of this Bill. The Freedom Caucus who oppose the Bill do so because they wish to make it more draconian, more heartless.
For them, being poor has always been about character or race or both — there is no history, only myth: poor white people are lazy, uneducated, foolish to stick to dying towns*. The poor are poor because they have not the ambition or fortitude to make it. The idea of generational poverty or economic disparities promulgated by the tax code or racist real estate or corporate practices has no place in their moral universe. They are Calvinists — the poor are poor because they were never part of the Elect. They were born the wrong color or they lacked the proper ruthlessness, the acidic ambition, the primal capacity for transcendent betrayal necessary to make the big money. Poor black, brown and red peoples — well, you know, they are what they are, animals. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa was clear about this in a comment that went unrebuked by the leaders of the Party: “When you start accentuating the differences, then you start ending up with people that are at each other’s throats,” King added. “And he’s adding up Hispanics and blacks into what he predicts will be in greater number than whites in America. I will predict that Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens.”**
The cancer of white supremacy tied to theological governance: that is what the Republican Party has become.
If the AHCA passes both the House and the Senate, President Trump will sign it. This billionaire will sign it and call out his happiness at how he got this done.
And people will die.
*”Kevin Williamson wrote of the white working class in National Review. “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.” He was only saying in public what other Republicans like Mitt Romney say about the “47 percent” in private when they think only well-heeled donors are listening.” from “No Sympathy for the Hillbilly”, Frank Rich. New York Magazine, March 19, 2017.
** from an interview with station WHO in Iowa, March 14, 2017. The “he” King refers to in his remarks is Jorge Ramos, host of Univision.
thank you mike. it is so thoughtful and to the point. I hope you don’t mind if I share it.
Your essays continue to distill the sprawling toxicity of our sequestered democracy into concrete, digestible beacons of even keel. They make sense of the emotional topsy turvy I feel completely overwhelmed by. Thank you.