Ted Cruz waxed on for some 21 hours about the dangers of Obamacare. But as offensive as Cruz is to many people, myself included, I can say honestly that I have been trying very sincerely to understand why conservatives are so dead set against Obamacare. I think I have finally figured it out. You may have done so already. It has taken me a little longer.
The reason it has is because their opposition simply didn’t make sense to me. I could not believe conservatives just didn’t want poor people to have insurance, especially since people with insurance have to pay when those without it show up at the hospital emergency room. I could not believe they truly believed Obamacare would take away the freedom of small business owners with 15 or more employees by requiring them to provide healthcare. After all, businesses that do get reduced rates and every penny they spend on employee insurance is tax deductible. I could not believe they actually believed requiring young people to have dirt cheap health insurance violates their freedom, especially since if they end up going to the hospital for a medical emergency (as do the poor) they will get treated at the expense of those of us who do have insurance.
No, none of this made sense to me. But, then, I heard a clip from a conversation between Ted Cruz and Rush Limbaugh that helped me see the real reason they oppose Obamacare. They believe it is another government handout to poor people! Both of them said so. They talked about the need to stop Obamacare before it goes into effect because once it does it will be more difficult to throw people who are receiving government subsidies to buy insurance off the program. Of course! That’s it in a nutshell. Obamacare includes financial assistance to people who cannot pay for insurance without help. Since conservatives believe people who receive public assistance are lazy, feckless, and moochers, they think Obamacare is just another example of the “Nanny State” that is ruining our society. They also believe government help is a disincentive to poor people to go out and find a job, even though most of them already have a job. And they oppose Obamacare because they don’t want to pay taxes that help people get something for nothing. That’s why they have offered no alternative. They don’t want any program that includes government helping people get insurance.
Once I realized this, I understood that what is going on today among conservatives is not a policy difference with liberals over how to help people more efficiently. It is about not helping people at all. It’s all about believing lending a helping hand is a good thing or believing it’s not. Nothing more. I say that because at the end of the day, poor people who get help are still poor. They have not become rich, or even middle class. They are still poor. Helping them doesn’t make life easier for them. It’s just helps them live.
So now I see where conservatives are truly coming from. This fight over Obamacare is not about freedom. It’s not about costing jobs. It’s not about hurting small businesses. It’s not about costing the average American too much money. It’s about whether or not you believe those of us who have a lot should help those of us who have little. Personally I do. It’s okay if you don’t. Just have the decency not to call me an appeaser, a Communist, or an enemy of freedom. I’m simply an American who was on the winning side in the last election while you lost. I think the least you can do is accept the results and move on.
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Great article and true in all aspects!!! Everyone in the U.S.A. should have the ability to have good healthcare insurance. There is no more abuse of the system by poor and lazy people than those who can afford fheir personal needs and take advantage of the system via loopholes, dishonesty and the attitude that the Government owes them!!!
Very well said Jan. I have been waiting for some of this conservative hostility to be directed at the health insurance companies – I’m not holding my breath.
Well said!
I think there are two major reasons why the conservatives are so vehemently opposing Obamacare. The first is their fear that it may actually turn out to be a good thing and their hatred of the President prevents them from being able to deal with the possibility that anything President Obama has done or will do, will be a good thing. My guess is that in the not too distant future if someone says we should kill Obamacare they will be quickly run out of town on a rail.
The second reason is what seems to me to be a mile wide mean streak running through the middle of most of the conservatives. This is especially puzzling to me because many of the conservatives are members of the Religious Right. I would think they should have some compassion. I don’t think that Jesus, or any tenet of Christianity, ever taught, or condoned stomping on the little guy.
Maybe the conservatives think that not spending money is a way to solve our country’s economic problems. I submit Europe’s recent experiments with austerity as evidence of that failed thinking. I am not a fan of Keynesian economics, but austerity is simply not working. So there has to be a middle ground somewhere that will work.
The one issue that I do have with Obamacare is that it does not do much to control our high, and rising, cost of health care. For example it does not address the issue of tort reform. I think the cost of medical malpractice insurance and litigation is a factor in our rising costs.
I agree with you, Jan, and with your respondents. There is a mean-spirited arrogance by so many who are gifted and cultivated through positive happenstances of life that it is baffling how they cannot see how much they suffer from “pride of self” ! It is unbefitting Christianity or any other religion and is moniker associated with the downfall of Lucifer, who converted that pride into the sin of “self assertion”! Yes, I’m saying these kinds of activities are flat out evil! We all must confront them at every opportunity!
With the energy of a child and the wisdom of and elder these two extremes are the closest to the vibration and energy of their personalized spirit. Living between these two phases can be the least spiritual due to conditioning towards physical attachment. The children and the elders offer us a vision of simplicity, purity, and truth which can be our pathway towards saving us from self pride.
Our children and elders are in the most vulnerable phases along the continuum of their physical life. Decision makers in the middle phase of life, the attached phase, jeopardize those in these vulnerable phases by removing medical care from healthy living, a community value.
It is my hope that at least some in their middle life phase, their conditioned phase, will view the children and elders, see their innate character, and adopt some of their wisdom toward assuring the Godly continuum of all lives from source through a body and on to their destiny.