Dems: Trumpcare bill will ‘kill you’
Violent rhetoric back even after shooting of U.S. rep
“#AHCA will devastate Americans’ healthcare. People will die.” — U.S. Sen. Liz Warren, on Twitter, May 4.
I’m so old, I remember when liberals thought violent political rhetoric was a bad thing. You know — like last week?
I was a guest last Thursday on WBUR’s “On Point With Tom Ashbrook,” listening to liberal panelists and callers decry the coarse political rhetoric endangering our civic health. One week later Senate Republicans released their Obamacare repeal legislation and the message from the left was a wee bit different:
“America: the Senate #GOP wants to kill you, and take your money. Period. #HealthcareBill” was the typical liberal tweet in my timeline.
The Daily Kos headline was just as subtle: “Senate Trumpcare version would kill even more [people] than the House bill”
Not to be outdone, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey called the GOP bill a “death sentence” because of changes in coverage for substance abuse treatment. He was just echoing Liz Warren’s words: “People will die.”
A week ago the left worried violent talk might lead to violent action. Today it’s all “Republican Plan To Fight Poverty? Take Health Care From Poor People And Watch Them Die.” What happened? Nothing. Despite the horror of a left-wing political assassin targeting unarmed Republicans playing baseball for charity, Democrats’ denunciation of over-thetop rhetoric was, to coin a phrase, “just words.”
Now there’s a bill that would take power away from government bureaucrats, a bill that would decriminalize your decision not to buy overpriced health insurance, and the Liz Warren Brigades are back at the barricades, screaming “killer” and “Nazi.”
Don’t Republicans engage in violent rhetoric, too?
Of course. Nasty namecalling in American politics is a bipartisan tradition that goes back to 1800 and Thomas “Congo Harem” Jefferson vs. John “The Hermaphrodite” Adams. However, at some point there’s usually an examination of the facts — often due to the demands of an independent press. Yeah, about that ... If you’ve been able to find accurate facts about the current health care mess in the mainstream media, you should be working for the CIA tracking terrorists.
Did you know, for example, that premiums on the Obamacare exchanges went up 116 percent in the past four years? That deductibles in Massachusetts have doubled since O-Romneycare went into effect? That despite the billions spent on Obamacare, there are still around 30 million uninsured Americans? That millions of Americans lost their insurance coverage when Obamacare took effect?
But did Obamacare opponents in 2009 scream that Democrats were “killers” taking health insurance from sick kids the way Democrats are today? No. The complaints from the right were about jobs being killed and wages lowered because of the impact of Obamacare on businesses. Which they were. Obamacare killed 300,000 jobs, shuttered 10,200 companies, and was responsible for the loss of $19 billion in wages, according to a study by American Action Forum.
What Republicans would do, if they could, is get rid of health care regulations and use vouchers to let low-income families shop for private insurance.
That would put downward pressure on medical costs for everyone, save taxpayers money and give individuals more power.
In the America of 2017, that’s going nowhere. Too many #GenerationCupcakers who want free stuff and nanny staters who like telling them what to do with it.
Instead the GOP is promoting half-measures.
They’re dumping billions of “free money” into the system while doing minor deregulation and reforms — just enough, they hope, to get market forces moving and push premiums down.
Yet even those half-measures are met with screams of “child killer!” And then liberals wonder why we can’t reach a commonsense compromise on health care.