Introductory
This
year 2014, the political battle which will determine whether the next president
is going to be a Republican or Democrat, is on healthcare. I think we are wrong in this fight against
Obamacare. In the polls, we simply close our eyes and refuse to see that Obamacare
is closer to the heart of the majority of the American people than our
Republican arguments against it are.
Thus waging a dimwitted battle against
Obamacare, the ultra-Rightists in our midst and those conservative extremists
in Congress are disconnecting us from our powerbase.
If
this continues, I can see that in the next presidential election the political
demise of the radical Right that controls Congress is almost certain.
The solution is, there is no
solution. It is just a flawed mindset of
Republican extremists about the objectionable practice of Capitalism in the
United States that considers the Government antipodal to progress.
Below is an editorial report I wrote and
published concerning this inextricable mindset of Republicanism – a requiem for
this winless struggle for power that I am looking at right now. – Edwin A. Sumcad
The truth is, at
the start of the year 2014, what I am looking at is a vexing scenario which
worries me, to say the least, that is if it is not already very disturbing to
all divided Americans whose ankles are tied down to the chain of economic woes
and intense rivalry for power. The worse part of it is that we are lost on what
to believe when we listen to politicians lambasting each other in public, and we
are confused in our attempt to identify which political protagonists are
friends or foes.
I do not believe
in Chinese Zodiac signs when predicting the future, and I may advise neither
should you, if not for the fact that the ominous events about to occur are too
obvious they would occur nonetheless, regardless of what the oracles would say.
For example, due
to mounting health problems, the mortality rate of the elderly population is
rising, and millions of Americans of all ages are dying every year for lack of
health insurance coverage.
In the corridors
of power, the nation’s warlike leaders fighting from the opposite sides of the
political realm are at each other’s throat. They demonize each other trying to
convince the public that behind this morbid state of affairs are their
opponents’ undoing -- the wickedness of those publicly accountable bad guys who
should be the only despicable culprits to blame.
With all the
animosities unfolding before our eyes, we do not need a Tarot reading or any
mystic interpretation of the astrological lining of the planets to know what is
most likely to happen in this hostile environment. The planetary Zodiac signs
that foretell what are likely to occur, and certain events about to take place
independent of those astrological mumbo-jumbos, are occurrences that are obviously
simultaneously concurrent, purely coincidental if not correspondingly
incidental to each other.
In short, what
is about to occur if it has not already occurred, is the 2014 do-or-die battle
for power between the Republicans and the Democrats and their millions of
followers. Their battlefield is
healthcare, and the battle to win or lose is in the Obamacare debates raging
across the country.
To the Liberals
or Democrats, Obamacare is what the American population needs which they never
have had for a long, long time … but to the Conservatives or Republicans and
the radical Tea Party, it is not Obamacare but ObamaScare! Because to the
latter’s mind Obamacare is not only scary but bad to the people’s health, the
struggle of the Conservatives and their allies against this particular
legislation is not only focused on repealing the law but in “killing” the law
with one swift blow if possible.
However, in Congress where the Republicans are in control of the Lower
House, attempts of this kind have not succeeded so far.
The outcome of
this protracted battle for power that I am talking about which is now in the
court of law and in the bar of public opinion is written in the sky, and
therefore it can be easily foretold by pedestrian minds or can even be predicted
by lay Americans in Watertown’s Public Square, New York. And that is when the Liberals win, millions
of mostly poor but healthier Americans who will live longer because of
Obamacare, will celebrate nationwide; they will idolize President Obama as a
national hero next to President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the New Deal Era whose
legacy to the poor and the economically disadvantaged includes the creation of
the United States’s Welfare System and the founding of this nation’s economic
safety net for all Americans … the Social Security System.
On the other
hand, if the Conservatives win in this power-struggle, the Republicans and
their followers in the corporate world of business will sing Roosevelt’s
“bouncy song”— to the popular tune of “Happy
Days Are Here Again” -- when the corporate powers of the healthcare
industry celebrate their triumph. At the same time, they will crucify Obama as
the nation’s vicious all-time villain; they will rule over millions of
Americans who have no health insurance or with expensive insurance that the
healthcare industry prices at will supposedly in a free market or free
enterprise environment, with the rising cost of medicine and medical services
imposed on consumers by their nationwide networks of healthcare providers.
According to the
Census Bureau, roughly 46 million people in the United States lacked health
insurance. It was estimated “that
currently 68 adults under age 65 die every day because they don’t have coverage
… Absent a significant change in coverage, the figure will climb to 84 by
2019,” so the census study projects.
The same
studies revealed that about 8.0 million die every day because they don’t have
health insurance coverage.
If the battle for
power is won by the Liberals, approximately 40.0 million older populations will
join the victory celebration. Elders 65 or older die of senescence or
aging-related diseases and non-insured patients dropped dead like flies so to
speak not only due to inadequate coverage but also because of hardly affordable
insurance benefits needed to save life.
In healthcare,
it appears that at this point in time the Republicans are losing the
support of the American public. My neutral assessment of this situation
points to the profit-oriented mindset of the capitalist-Conservatives versus
that of the Liberals which is people-oriented, as to why the Republicans are
rapidly losing their wider base support.
For instance,
published reports of political ideological studies show that the Republican
legislative policy is “to enable
ambitious, successful people to become as wealthy as they can, without
government ‘interference,’ reasoning that their great wealth will benefit the
whole country and all the people.” To
my knowledge, and for my understanding of Development Economics in the academe,
there is no doubt that this is clearly a capitalist mindset – the empowerment
of the rich in whose hands lies the fate of the poor and the economically
disadvantaged; a small enclave of the rich and powerful also decide the future
of the country as if no government exists.
In this mindset, the Government is unnecessary … it is negatively viewed
as “interference”.
Contrast this
Republican mindset supposedly for the good of the public with that of the
Liberal-Democrats in Congress which “legislate
to make the vast majority prosperous, because widespread prosperity will
benefit the whole country in many ways.”
Opposed to that of the Republicans, this mass-based mentality is
classless, which contradicts the objectionable features of Capitalism; at least
populist or anti-elitist if not philosophically socialist in nature and
metaphysically egalitarian in theory, it reflects the tenets of a communal
ideology – for the good of the commonweal.
It is also no
doubt clear in the people’s mind which of these two differing mindsets is
closest to the fundamental objectives of Obamacare that attract a wider public
interest from almost all sectors of society. Bear in mind that in this country,
the successful business corporate rich are indubitably outnumbered by millions
of the poor and struggling middle-class that consider the intervening
regulatory government their ally [to the Republicans -- the enemy], to check
the dominant and controlling power of the powerfully advantaged class of
American society.
By the way, for
those who still do not know what Obamacare is all about, here is what it stands
for in law: Obamacare is Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) -- Affordable Care Act (ACA) for
short. President Barack Obama signed
this legislation into law on March 23, 2010 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court as constitutional on June 28, 2012 in the landmark case of National Federation of Independent Business
v. Sebelius.
This healthcare
reform law targets the excesses of the giant healthcare industry that takes
advantage of consumers who are in dire need of medical services … actually
consumers under the mercy of profiteering enterprises or victims of greed in
our modern corporate world.
For instance,
under the law, health insurance cannot drop policyholders if they become sick;
insurance price discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions or sex
is prohibited.
Insurance-covered
children and dependents cannot be cut off from coverage until their 26th
birthday, in addition to many more legally introduced inhibitions that before
this reform law was passed had saved a lot of money for the healthcare industry
and their service providers, at the expense of patients, particularly those
gravely ill and/or dying patients who simply passed away with hardly any relief
or recourse under the industry-controlled free market environment.
Futhermore,
under Obamacare, Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius is mandated to define
what are the “essential health benefits”
that insurance plans should include. These standard benefits are "ambulatory patient services; emergency
services; hospitalization; maternity and newborn care; mental health and
substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment;
prescription drugs; rehabilitative and facilitative services and devices;
laboratory services; preventive and wellness services and chronic disease
management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care."[196][197].
To the
Republican opponents of ACA, of which the lobbying healthcare industry is one
of GOP’s major campaign fund providers, these legal impositions are too much that
they crossed the lines of amicable tolerance. The National Federation of
Independent Business has to sue the Federal Government naming Health Secretary Sebelius
defendant in an effort to declare ACA unconstitutional. This attempt also failed.
The much
publicized Cyber Crash followed. The Healthcare.gov website that allows people
to apply for insurance under Obamacare crashed mysteriously. Investigations
could not pinpoint who or what caused it.
But the public
knows that the Republicans and their corporate allies in the healthcare
industry are desperate. There is no
doubt in the public mind that they will do everything to neutralize if not
“kill” Obamacare.
They even
resorted to government shutdown in October last year just to get a concession
from President Obama to water down Obamacare and to strike a compromise on
other related political issues. But again there is no doubt in the people’s mind
that the GOP had become so desperate and destructive they no longer care if as
a result of their ruthless action the people will suffer in hell and/or the
system goes kaput or destroyed, so long as they can strike back at
Obamacare. This is evidenced by the
Republican-initiated government closedown that benefited no one, even
themselves.
Many
unfavorable comments were heard that what the mean-spirited GOP and their
accomplices did was “childish” if not
“foolish”. In fact it backfired. Instead, ACA became more popular.
Surveys say
Obama’s approval rating moved up to 47 percent, which means that while the
government shutdown wounded the Republican Party, “Obama’s overall political standing remains stable in the poll.”
With healthcare
as the battleground in this continuing battle for power, Obamacare will pave
the way for the election of the next Democrat president after Obama. This is almost as sure as when the sun rises
in the East.
It is sad to say
that powerless, the publicly-disconnected opponents of Obamacare will just in
time wither in the vine.
No alignment of the planetary stars can change
the course of this event. #
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