The sound behind the fury, why republicans are so pissed about healthcare
Below is a letter to the editor from today’s NY times which sums up the reasons national healthcare will seriously screw this country up. Below that, some of my own thoughts on republicans in general and healthcare spesificly. .
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Frank Rich cannot figure out why Republicans are so angry about the newly minted health care bill. It resembles the bill signed into law by a Republican governor in Massachusetts in 2006. Why the fuss?
Timothy Cahill, state treasurer of Massachusetts, explains why. The Massachusetts plan is a “fiscal train wreck.” The law was initially estimated to cost the taxpayer $88 million a year. The state’s health care costs since 2006 now top $4 billion. MassCare has survived because of federal bailouts, and Mr. Cahill sensibly wonders who will cover the shortfall in the national plan when the costs inevitably exceed the estimates of its advocates.
Supporters of the national bill are so terrified of these reasonable concerns on the part of moderate conservatives (yes, we do exist) that they go to great lengths to redefine our objections as something sinister. We know they are not, and we won’t be disparaged into liking this bill.
Maggie McGirr
This letter sums the problem up exactly. The Massachusetts plan is a nightmare. It mandates coverage for everyone which wouldn’t be bad in a utopia, the type of place where animals sing every morning while friendly waterfalls wash the cars in your driveway just for kicks. But the world is not that type of place and Massachusetts idealism is going to drive there budget deficit higher than the empire state building before long.
Keep in mind that mass is one of the best states in the country. Its people are highly educated, within the top five, its people are also the least poor. And even with so few people in poverty relative to the rest of the country, the program went over budget.
Meanwhile, in the country as a hole, we have states that are uneducated and poor, and the government is going to have to pay for health costs that those states won’t be able to cover, and our own debt on a national level will make the Iraq war look like buying a superball for a quarter.
Of course, some republicans are just angry because there bigots. I don’t care if it sounds harsh, if you’re a racist, you are also probably a republican, even before the black president thing came up to really firm up that statement. The religious right is anti-abortion, anti-gay, and I’ve decided that hating gay people is to racism as pot is to drugs. Gateway drug. So some republicans are just pissed because people are openly gay, blacks don’t have to cross the street for white people anymore, and women are out of the home, but Fuck them, they aren’t worth the respect I give to a homeless man begging for crack.
So there are two reasons republicans are bothered by this bill, some are bothered because, frankly, it has a chance to throw this country into a downward spiral of ruin, and the others, the crazy ones, are angry because they see it as a symbolic kick in the balls, another jot on the list of things that aren’t going in there way. The first reason is a political position, and the passion with which its explicated shouldn’t result in declarations of republican infantilism. the second reason for anger, however, makes me wish we’d bring back firing squads.
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