The American Health Care Act, a truly awful piece of
legislation by virtually any measure, passed in the House of Representatives
yesterday. Following this “victory,” the House Republicans were bused over to
the White House for – wait for it – a beer bash and victory celebration. Forget
the fact that celebrating after a sure-to-be-rewritten bill has passed only the
House is like declaring victory in an NBA playoff game when you hold a
one-point lead at the end of the first quarter. What really gets to me is the
naked, crass lack of empathy for the weakest members of our increasingly broken
democracy: our sick, handicapped, and poor. Tack on the party’s pathological
focus on rolling back all of our meager progress on women’s health issues, and
we have a party in control of both houses of congress, not to mention the white
house, careening down a very dark road, with the accelerator on the floor.
Unfortunately, the gear is reverse.
A week ago, getting this bill passed looked like an
impossible task. It was too radical for the moderate Republicans and too
moderate for the radical wing known as the House Freedom Caucus. The compromise
bill was only successful after strong-arm lobbying of individual congressmen by
Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence, and two amendments, one to
please the moderates and another to appease the radicals. It is the shockingly
cynical MacArthur amendment that deserves the most scrutiny as well as the most
scorn. It is essentially a loophole big enough to drive the buses that took
these guys to the White House through. It is both deceptive and utterly
cynical. It allows the individual states to opt out of many of the key guarantees
of Obamacare like coverage of pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps on insurance
payouts.
As a veteran of advanced bladder cancer, both the
pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps changes have a very real chance of
affecting me personally. But don’t weep for me; I’m an old man who has had a
great life. Weep for the child who is born with a serious disease, a child who
may never be able to have heath insurance in her entire life due to this
calculatedly cruel bill. Take ten minutes and watch Jimmy Kimmel’s tearful monologue about the heart disease and surgery that his newborn son endured. He
closes with the question: Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican, or
something else, can we not all agree that we must not let our children die
because we disagree on how health care should be provided? Personally, I think
Jimmy gives the Republican party too much credit. They are not disagreeing on
how health care should be provided so much as whether it should be, for
certain citizens at least.
My biggest fear is that the purveyors of this Faustian
bargain will not be taken to task for their inhumanity, and that our apathetic
and disconnected electorate will simply not care enough to get off their
collective asses and send these devils packing in 2018. I feel physically ill
when I view the images of their callous and tone-deaf victory beer party. Our
beloved leader talks of improved care and lower costs knowing full well that
his words are blatant lies. I gag at the sight of rich old white men chuckling
about their supposed win, and seeing Paul Ryan’s twisted leer of a knowing
smile is to look into the face of evil itself.
I ask you, the citizen, the potential voter: Will you rise
above your partisan politics and call this travesty of a health care plan what
it is? Will you admit that most of our Republican congressmen care only about their own monetary
gain and political power, and not a whit about what is right for you and our
country? Will you tolerate living in an amoral society where we allow the
neediest of our fellow citizens, many of them innocent children, to die?
Because that is exactly what we are talking about here, the death of our
weakest. Will you look at these men and call them what they are?
They are heartless bastards.
Portland, OR
May 5th, 2017
