GOP's War on American People: Death Panels Edition
The GOP is determined to destroy the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Planned Parenthood, as part of dismantling the "social safety net" that replaced the robber-baron attitudes of the 19th and early 20th century. It does not matter to the GOP Congressional members that the same social safety net benefitted their families and themselves since the first part was put into place. It does not matter to them that lives were saved, that the nation as a whole became healthier with every addition to the safety net, that "the Greatest Generation" was able to be what it was because of that safety net. That even earlier attempts to create a Public Health Service that promoted water treatment and sewage treatment by municipalities, so that people didn't die in epidemics of water-borne diseases...promoted immunizations that saved thousands of lives, administered by public health nurses...that the foundations of a healthy society--uncontaminated water, uncontaminated food supply, uncontaminated air to breathe, safe housing...that all those things were only accomplished within the social safety net enforced by, and largely funded by, the government--small governments in towns, larger ones in counties, states, and federally.
So the GOP in House and Senate both voted to remove protections from the ACA, with the intent of repealing it completely. And to replace it? Nothing yet. Vague proposals that would return many people back to the inadequate health care that they had before the ACA brought 30 million people some security in access to health care. What this means is that people will die for lack of health care that the ACA was supplying in the past few years. Others will go bankrupt, lose their homes, lose their jobs, because they cannot afford the health care they need. That someone in their family needs. The GOP doesn't care.
Remember 4 years ago in one of the early Republican "debates between potential candidates, Republicans attending were asked "What about the people who can't afford insurance or the medical care they need for a critical illness?" And someone yelled "Let 'em die!" and the crowd applauded, cheered, laughed. That's what the GOP is like. "Let 'em die." Because they see anyone needing help as "worthless." "Losers." Mitt Romney four years before that said 47% of Americans were "freeloaders." Former Nevada Congressman Hardy said disabled people were "a drain on society." With leadership like that it's no wonder that the GOP is full of angry haters, eager to attack anyone who doesn't fall in line; For example: some tweets from a very angry GOP woman: "People in this country are poor because they CHOOSE to be (in other words, "losers") and in response to someone saying they found the cost of ACA reasonable: "That is because good Americans are subsidizing your worthless asses." Since I'm not in the business of sending hasslers to someone else's space, I'm not naming her.) But the overall effect (with the hard right hating people of color, most women, the disabled, immigrants, foreigners, anyone they suspect might need something) is that the life the GOP considers worth saving is the fertilized egg, because the fertilized egg is inexpensive. Once that fertilized egg is born, it's a liability and it might as well die if it has any problems.
So the GOP, having collected their tight little body of haters, who are basically people scared of anyone not like themselves and fear-biting everyone else like a chihuahua trembling on someone's lap, defines "different" as "worthless," and "losers," and "libtards," now gleefully celebrates knocking millions of people out of the ability to access medical care, while at the same time creating chaos in the medical field, where jobs will be lost (with the fallout that those people, at least some of them, will lose their homes, will not be able to send their kids to school, will slide right down into poverty. But since "People are poor because they CHOOSE to be," there's no help for them there, of course. Trump is the lap into which all the chihuahuas are now packed, shivering and snarling and snapping at at anyone who comes close. The GOP doesn't care if the country gets sicker, if the lifespan drops, if maternal/infant mortality rises, if medical costs drive people into bankruptcy, if people who could work as long as they got their medicine lose their jobs because they don't. They dream the impossible dream of a country with only ups and upper ups of income, and no taxes, but still (somehow) a labor force taking care of the gritty bits they don't want to do themselves.
Why do I call this Death Panels? Because once again everything the GOP accuses the Democrats of is something the GOP is doing--has been doing--and wants to divert attention from. Remember the Death Panels scares that the GOP threw out about the ACA? Omigosh if there's government funded medicine then someone's going to create Death Panels to tell you it's your turn to die. In reality, the GOP, by destroying the ACA (and Medicare, which they also have their eye on) is telling more than 30 million people "You're worthless...just DIE, why don't you? Get sick you can just DIE. Get hit by a car, or shot by a criminal, or have a road cave in under you, you might just as well DIE because we're not going to let you have any health care you can't pay for all by yourself. Worthless scum. Loser." It's Death Panel under a new name...several new names, like "conservative values" or "fiscal responsibility." It still means that other people think you're worthless and you should just die. The ACA never had "death panels." The GOP is enacting them.
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