Today is a major vote to reduce the efficacy of the ACA (Obamacare) and I am furious.
I have asthma (read here for how I feel during an attack). I’ve had it since I was a child, and did not “grow out of it” (this is a myth by the way – it doesn’t magically go away.) I struggle with this disease and will my entire life. This means I have a “preexisting condition” and many insurance companies would love to kick me off their plan because – well I am a risk. It isn’t a choice I made. It isn’t some stupid stunt I tried to pull when I was sixteen. It is something I was born with and have minimal control over. I totally recognize that 100 years ago, even if I somehow had survived all the likely childhood diseases that plagued kids without vaccines – I would probably have died as a child.
So for the House of Representatives to be stripping away key elements of ACA without actually replacing them makes my blood boil.
And here is why it isn’t just annoyance. I was annoyed seven years ago when they tried repeal votes. I was annoyed during the election cycle over the past 2 years (because it really started in 2015) that GOP candidates were promising bigger and better reform that would “replace Obamacare with something terrific” (Source).
The Republican Party has had Seven years (minimum) to come up with a replacement plan. They haven’t. All they want to do is strip away what little benefits the ACA passed – protection for preexisting conditions being the one that will effect me personally for sure. So yeah, it’s personal to me every time they talk about repealing “Obamacare” – they are literally threatening my life. If I get kicked off insurance (because none of the companies offer a plan at any price for people who have life-long illnesses) and have an asthma attack such that I go to the ER – how the hell am I supposed to pay for that “out of pocket.”
I am not against figuring out a path that is NOT socialized medicine. Whatever. The fact that it IS working in so many other countries and I don’t have a better plan is one of my best arguments for it. It works. Like seat belts. If the GOP doesn’t want something because it’s “socialized” they need to come up with something else. Their failure to come up with anything and then shoot down the only option being offered… makes me see red.
It’s like the person in a relationship saying “I’m hungry” and when you offer someplace to eat they say, “Oh no, I don’t want that.” We all know what happens next, you said “Ok, what do you want?” and they respond “Oh I don’t care.” YES. YES YOU DO CARE. If you really didn’t care that first thing I suggested you would have said yes to.
I feel like my representative is JarJarBinks today. Right now, he comes across as the same kind of stupid sycophant – following his party blindly instead of coming up with actually useful solutions to the complex problems of the day. Having never actually learned the ins-and-out of the job he has been tasked with. Honestly, JarJar has more excuse, he was filling in for Padme – my representative has held this post for years. And I don’t think he has ever had the balls to vote against the party (finding that info was surprisingly difficult – you can find the voting records, but no one took that and applied “party affiliation” as far as I could find)
Dream by Day 