Anybody delusional enough to try to claim that partisan politics isn’t behind their opposition to health care reform ought to pipe down.
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| OBAMA: Bulls-eye on his back? |
Because a lot of the rhetoric we’re going to hear this week – both for and against – is so blatantly partisan and oriented toward Nov. 6. The legitimacy of healthcare reform as an issue is going to get buried.
FOR IT SEEMS that sometime this week, possibly on Monday, we’re going to get a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States that will be meant to put an end to the legal issues that cropped up in the wake of the federal government attempting to approve a new law meant to provide health care benefits to all – even those who are not currently insured.
The ideologues have always hated this issue, partially because they don’t want Barack Obama being able to claim it for his legacy and also because many of them consider it a waste of time and resources to be concerned about uninsured people.
They probably are deluded enough to think that those people choose to be uninsured – which is such nonsense. About the only people who are more delusional on this planet are the ones who think the Chicago Cubs are going to win a pennant anytime soon.
Which is why I find it ridiculous that people are claiming health care reform is “unconstitutional” because it “forces” people to purchase a plan to help them cover the cost of medical care.
SO LONG AS the federal government also is helping people come up with a plan they can afford, where’s the problem? Except to those who would just as soon leave those uninsured off the rolls and with nothing!
That’s what this issue is really about, except their choice of rhetoric is meant to make their opposition seem more high-minded than it ever could be in reality.
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| MOURDOCK: Premature? |
Yes, I am a health care reform supporter, because I view the problem of so many uninsured people as one that can drag down our society. It is something we must address, even if we’d prefer to think that “we” have insurance and the lack of it is someone else’s problem.
But I expect the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to find some way of restricting the measure – which the ideologues will use to spew rhetoric meant to say that the whole measure was “struck down.”
OF COURSE, THERE also will be enough of the measure that survives that will allow its backers to claim it was upheld.
Which means the “truth” will have to lie somewhere in the middle.
It certainly won’t lie anywhere near where Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock says it does.
He is a candidate for U.S. Senate from the Hoosier state who put together a video of himself praising the Supreme Court for rejecting the health care reform measure and put it on YouTube.
EXCEPT THAT HE goofed, and that video went up and became public on Thursday (which was the day that some originally thought there might be a Supreme Court ruling on the issue).
Somewhere, I can’t help but envision soon-to-be former Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., hearing about this, shaking his head in disgust, and thinking to himself, “I lost to this nitwit?”
For that reason alone, I’d like to see the high court wind up upholding significant portions of the health care reform plan – even though I know there are enough ideologues on the court who came into this issue viewing it as their “job” to put this thing in check.
Not that I think, as some want to believe, that such action would make Obama look weak in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 6 general election.
IF ANYTHING, I think the fact that the ideologues are out gunning for this may well convince some wavering people to think in terms of voting for Obama’s re-election – just to keep the ideologues from having too much control over government.
It may wind up making them look like such bullies that people could become sympathetic. Think I’m kidding? I couldn’t help but chuckle about the new poll commissioned by the Reuters wire service.
People are buying into terminology and the rhetoric being used by the Republican opposition (that Reuters poll only had 14 percent of Republicans saying they favor health care reform, compared to 75 percent of Democrats). Yet upon further questioning, they approve of the intent of the various provisions of health care reform.
Could it be that many of us realize there is a serious problem, but have had our minds warped by all the nonsense-talk being spewed by the ideologues who have always viewed this as a campaign tactic – and little more?
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