Cassi Creek:
Congressman
David Phillip Roe, R 1st TN has introduced another attempt to overturn
the ACA. The first part of the proposed
bill is the immediate repeal of the ACA.
The last part of the bill is a redundant anti-abortion inclusion that
already exists in other federal laws.
The end and
beginning of Roe’s “Healthcare Flexibility and Choices for Families Act, (there’s
the magic incantation – Families) are another attempt to overturn the ACA and
to make abortion even more difficult for women to obtain.
The middle
portions of the bill are familiar GOP territory. The bill promises a cap on insurance at 200%
of the average premium for the state. It
proposes a system of tax refunds and tax credits. Those people with pre-existing conditions can
supposedly obtain coverage while moving from job-provided coverage to other
insurance groups if there has been no break in insurance coverage. The huge joke on the working poor, who need
the ACA is that too many of them are working at jobs designed to make them
ineligible for employer provided coverage.
It does such workers no good to offer them a tax cut in order to
purchase health insurance when they earn so little that they owe no income
taxes. Tax credits are equally specious
and frankly offensive.
This bill is
standard GOP/teavangelist policy. The
bill will simply eliminate insurance coverage for the working poor, the
unemployed, and some of the former middle class, leaving the health insurance
industry determining who gets care and who is denied after having paid decades
of premiums.
As a
physician, Congressman Roe may be better equipped than many elected officials
to recognize problems in health care delivery.
I have no doubt that he wants to see a system that provides health care,
which is decided upon by patient and doctor.
Unfortunately, he has adopted the “get sick, die quick” approach to
health care that is the goal of health insurance companies.
What this
nation needs is a health care system as envisioned by Harry Truman and later by
Richard Nixon, a national health care single payer program. Socialized Medicine? Exactly.
I’d much rather my taxes go to pay for a national health insurance than
to further enrich people paying their selves multi-million dollar bonuses made
possible by denying health care to people.
And by the
way, Congressman, If the government is shutdown because your party thinks it is
smart enough to destroy the economy so that the GOP/teavangelists can point to
President Obama as the cause, please understand that millions of Americans will
do everything that they can to make certain the blame is placed exactly where
it actually belongs.
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