Slimdown The Lying Republicans
Those Retarded Republicans are at it again.
Senator Obama ran for president on the promise of bringing universal health coverage to America. Being that America has a for-profit “free market” healthcare system, this means the free market has provided us with a healthy, well-insured population that is protected from catastrophic costs and prejudiced coverage rules, right?
Nope, sorry, no one thinks that 30% uninsured, $14k/night hospital stays, and ignoring pre-existing conditions was doing this country well. There are so many fat, sick, & medicated people in this country it’s pretty depressing and really dragging the entire nation down into a lazy, hazy hole.
If I wanted to get my family partially-covered under the old system it would cost me well over $800/month, with a big co-pay, a huge max on out of pocket expenses, and more ridiculous paperwork, contracts, forms, and confusion. I’ve been in a few HMOs in my time, it was not something I was feeling happy and cozy about.
So Obama ran on the promise of fixing this situation and he won in 2008. The system reform came to be known as The Affordable Care Act, and it made a couple small but major changes.
First, existing plans could not ignore pre-existing conditions anymore, and your kids could stay on the family plan until the age of 26. We all benefit from that.
Another change was that everyone was required to obtain some form of health insurance, similar to auto insurance. The penalty for driving without insurance is large, mainly to protect everyone else on the road.
The penalty for not having health insurance is quite small in comparison — you don’t lose any rights to be treated at the hospital (as opposed to losing the right to drive), and at the end of the year you get a penalty on your tax bill, starting around $95 and going up every year to top out around $600. That’s per year, and that’s the penalty for not purchasing a plan from someone, somewhere. These plans cost in the range of $1500-$6000 per year, so the penalty for not buying is around 10% of the price of buying.
The final piece of the puzzle is the subsidies to most average middle-class and poor americans on the health insurance. Tied directly to your income and family situation (not to pre-existing injuries) – the subsidies will cover anywhere from 0-60% of your insurance costs, hopefully making it affordable for every family, thus covering everyone, stopping no-pay situations, and working to improve the health of our society.
Everything still runs through the existing insurance companies, which made the lefties angry, but it’s America and we will never have a single payer system — too little opportunity for capitalism.
The insurance companies get millions more on their roles, the doctors get paid, people get service, and we move forward.
All of this was controversial to the Republicans, even though much of it was their idea. In fact, RomneyCare is the model for the ACA. So they came out strong against what they now called Obamacare, forming Tea Parties and marching about in white fear.
My experiences with Tea Party people show them to be kings of ignorance. It’s one thing to not understand or care about politics, it’s another to continually misunderstand them as you actively protest everything you are told is bad.
The election of 2012 was seen by many as the universal health care election. Romney tried to kill his own baby and that went nowhere. Obama was re-elected with a bad economy and without a war. The people had spoken again – they wanted healthcare reform and were willing to go through the change.
As a last-ditch effort (so we thought) to get the law overturned, Republicans turned to the Supreme Court – “surely this is against the constitution to force someone to have insurance?” they thought. The conservative court ruled that the law is (ahem) legal, and millions were spent building out the new health insurance exchange websites where US citizens can shop for actual policies and see their subsidy amounts. October 1 was set as the open date for the exchanges. They are open now and starting to recover from the first day crush of applicants.
But the retarded Republicans still can’t accept that this is here to stay. I don’t know what they propose as an alternative — there seems to be none. I also know that there are plenty of uninsured Republicans with health problems signing up, and you know they won’t turn down those subsidies either.
Republicans don’t realize that most major businesses grow because of subsidies in the form of tax-free zones, loopholes, and other mechanisms. Dumb Republicans think Walmart beats all other stores because it’s somehow better in a free market. They don’t see or care about the subsidies it receives, and they don’t understand that the free market is not free.
Our dumb Republicans would rather have our tax money subsidizing corporations instead of subsidizing our own health. They are fascists but too dumb to pronounce or understand the concept.
They are dumb enough to say that Obama is a “socialist in the pocket of big business”. Fucking morons. Their stupidity continues to impress and frighten me.
BTW- the title is based on Fox News’ attempt to rename the Shutdown a “slimdown”. They are idiots but they do understand the power of words on idiot voters. For example – Jimmy Kimmel was making fun of people on the street who fully supported the “Affordable Care Act” but were against “Obamacare”.
Idiots.