Daily Times (Primos, PA)

Toomey’s defense of GOP health plan is pure hokum

- “The draft bill unveiled in the Senate today strikes me as an important and constructi­ve first step in repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a better, stable, consumerdr­iven health care system for all Pennsylvan­ians. This measure does not pull the rug

What a

I mean, let’s discuss rationally, shall we?

The federal government already provides a lot of health care and insurance coverage — to the military, their families, veterans, government employee retirees, Indians, those on Social Security Disability and SSI, prison inmates, pregnant poor women, and poor children.

That’s well over half population.

Medicaid alone covers about 50 percent of all pregnancie­s and childbirth­s; health care for 60 percent of children, including for those born with lifelong disabiliti­es, and two-thirds of the elderly in nursing homes.

The Republican proposal is not a health care plan, it is a “decimate Medicaid and give the wealthy a massive tax cut,” plan that they hope no one will notice before the next election or two or three. load of codswallop! this the

Then they will use the federal deficit, which they are already blowing up with out-of-this-world defense spending and mammoth “tax reform,” to keep it out of the health-carefor-all business.

“Sorry,” they will say, we’d like everyone to have health care, but no can do, it’s just ‘unsustaina­ble.’”

Why are they so hot to push through legislatio­n that is going to make access to health care so much more difficult and costly and out-of-reach for so many of the people who elected them?

Fiscal responsibi­lity? There’s an easy fix for that — raise taxes, institute a fair, loophole-free tax system, tax the wealthy at higher rates.

Grover Norquist can go drown himself in a bathtub. If we are going to save this country, we will have to raise taxes sooner or later. Better sooner.

Is it the Republican­s’ raw, naked hatred of former President Barack Obama and all he managed to accomplish in the face of their eight years of unyielding obstructio­n?

Does it occur to them that the next Democratic administra­tion and Congress will do the same to them (and have greater public support)?

Is it their hatred of the individual mandate, the requiremen­t that the young and healthy buy insurance so as to provide a large enough pool for all to afford insurance?

It is hard to see how the individual mandate destroyed anybody’s freedom but those healthy youngsters will certainly get some very expensive “free health care” on the backs of the rest of us when they crash their motorcycle or get HIV.

Do the congressio­nal Republican­s hate and fear of women so much that they would toss millions off low-cost reproducti­ve health care by defunding Planned Parenthood for a

HOKUM » PAGE 8

 ?? J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., heads to a caucus meeting with the leadership struggling with senators who are opposed or wavering on the Republican health care bill, at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., heads to a caucus meeting with the leadership struggling with senators who are opposed or wavering on the Republican health care bill, at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
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