The Real Problem Right-Wingers Have With 'Obamacare:' It Requires Insurers To Insure

By Manifesto Joe

It's obvious that President Obama made a big political -- I repeat, political -- mistake in selling his health care plan. And he should never have put any trust in computer geeks -- such people nowadays hold the Earth hostage to their "expertise," while in reality they are often among the most titanic fools on the planet. (Not only do their initial programs sometimes not work, they are forever changing programs that worked fine as they were. It seems that they never heard the old wisdom that if it works, DON'T FIX IT!)

But the Mainstream Media are failing to tell the entire story, which is, of course, nothing unusual. Obviously Fox News gives a distorted picture; that's their job as a right-wing propaganda instrument. But the MSM aren't doing a good job on this issue, either.

This isn't the case with everyone, but many of the plans that commercial "insurers" are canceling are "junk" insurance, policies that offer very limited "coverage" and would leave the "insured" in incredible binds if they actually needed things like hospitalization and such. The reason such "plans" are being canceled is that they don't meet the minimum standards that the Affordable Care Act set forth.

I got to see the flip side of this issue very recently, having been unemployed for 27 weeks. (Oh, and I still haven't been paid for the last week of that, and never will be -- thanks so much, Texas Workforce Commission.) I went with the expensive COBRA plan I was left with after being laid off, but went looking for cheaper alternatives to COBRA, in case I was jobless longer than I was.

In the first place, it was very hard to find anyone who would "insure" me at a reasonable price. I have asthma and allergies, and I take meds for high blood pressure. I was 56 at the time, too. If you're not absolutely healthy, you are usually rejected just for pre-existing conditions such as those. And they don't like older people, either.

The companies that would write me a "policy" were willing to write me junk. I was accepted by one company, then found out much to my horror that they didn't even offer a prescription drug plan to a customer who was willing to pay them over $400 a month. What they had was a discount "plan" that one can obtain cheaply at any retail pharmacy like Walgreens. And they wanted "mo' money" for that? I refused to pay these greedy scumbags one penny and canceled with them post haste.

Anyway, I wasn't making much headway at finding alternatives to COBRA, until I finally landed a job with benefits. Unlike many Americans, I was somewhat lucky.

But I got a good look at what's out there for people who buy their own health "insurance" a la carte, and it's dismal. It's either too expensive, or it doesn't cover jack shit.

For more details, here's a link to a story in Mother Jones magazine that presents more of the real picture.

The bottom line is that the insurance companies have been ripping Americans off for many decades. "Obamacare," minus the public option, was only a partial solution to the problem. It never was anything else. It was simply what Obama could manage to get through a Congress that is partially owned by the greedy, ruthless insurance companies.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE REPUBLICANS SUCCEED?

It's pretty obvious, from all the political hay that they're making, is that the downtrodden Republican Party, ever desperate these days for an issue, is playing this up for all they can. It's their goal to derail the Affordable Care Act. In my own state, Gov. Rick "El Pendejo" Perry is absolutely refusing to cooperate with this law's implementation.

There are other sinister things going on, like Koch brothers-financed booths on college campuses, passing out free beer in trying to persuade young people not to buy health insurance, but rather just risk getting sick.

If "Obamacare" is derailed, then what? Well, it looks like we'll go back to the way things have been for decades. You know -- up to 50 million Americans uninsured, up to 30 million more underinsured, people with pre-existing conditions denied coverage, insurance companies getting obscenely rich while putting out little or nothing in return, people who do have health insurance paying higher premiums and higher taxes to cover the cost of uninsured people with their visits to ERs and charity hospitals. You know -- the very conditions that led to the passage of the half-ass "Obamacare" program in the first place.

I'm not an optimist. But what this all may mean is that, perhaps within a decade, Americans will at last get what they should have gotten long ago: Medicare-E (Medicare for Everybody). A single-payer system is the only solution to this travesty. But of course, what that means is that some people will simply have to die off, so that less brainwashed voters can force this to become law.

Let's face it -- the United States is the last, I repeat the very last, developed country on Earth that doesn't have a national health care system. We wouldn't have to do it the way everybody else has done it. Doctors and other providers don't have to become employees of a national service, the way it is in more "socialized" systems. In America, we can style it our own way.

But "free market" arguments don't wash on most points, and certainly not where health care is concerned. If I have a catastrophic illness, I'm not going to be in a position of shopping around for the best prices on doctors, hospitals, ambulances, etc., like some Arab trader. I'm going with whomever can take my case ASAP, with money as no object. (But of course, it's certainly the object, and the objective, of "providers" and "insurers." And they take everything that isn't nailed down.)

Perhaps you have noticed that among all the other developed countries on Earth, none, not one, of them seeks to emulate the American health care system. Interviews in those countries indicate that their people generally think Americans are just plain fucking crazy to have tolerated this shit for decade after decade.

I understand that one of the sticking points of "Obamacare" is that it requires coverage for mental health ailments. I hate to say such hurtful things, but in the case of many Americans, that strikes me as a pretty good idea.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.