You may already know that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA), much to the disgust of the right wingers and the Republican Party. What you may not know is that last week, the GOP-controlled the House of Representatives repealed the ACA for the 33rd time. Yes, since it was first passed in 2010 Republicans have wasted our tax dollars 33 times knowing the Democratically-controlled Senate would beat it back. But what most people don’t really know is the high cost of this fruitless foolishness.
CBS News did a cost analysis of the Republican antic by using information from the Congressional Research Office. According to the report, it costs taxpayers nearly $50 million for these repeal charades.
Thinkprogress.org took the debacle a step further by costing out what could be done with that kind of money. It could have provided “subsidies for about 4,500 families of four in the exchanges, or one year of food stamps for 31,131 people.“ The exchanges are mandated by the ACA as the official marketplace for purchasing medical insurance.
Since the High Court’s ruling, some Republican governors have shouted to the rooftops that they will not implement the ACA. This declaration in spite of the fact that the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost of Medicaid expansion for the first three years, and reimburse 90 percent of the cost for states after that.
The sad and sick part of this is that it’s the governors who have citizens who are the poorest and least healthy – like Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Florida. Florida was just exposed as having the biggest outbreak of tuberculosis in 20 years. The state had kept the outbreak a secret but was righteously busted when they closed a major hospital that had treated tough tuberculosis cases for more than 60 years.
What happens to all those uninsured or underinsured people who desperately need treatment for this highly contagious disease?
The conservatives in this country love to talk about the beloved U.S. Constitution until they want to disregard it, as they have effectively done with expansive abortion restrictions making it hard to tell that Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land. Because of the likes of the Tea Party and other right wingers, these folks have moved to the far right at a greater speed than other ideological trends.
U.S. Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) testified during the repeal hearings that a person with a brain tumor should not be covered by the ACA. Foster Friess, a billionaire investor and supporter of Rick Santorum’s super PAC, said that Bayer aspirin was an effective use of birth control; gals can just “put it between their knees.” Former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that poor children had no work ethic and needed to become janitors to avoid being “future pimps and prostitutes.“ Indiana Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Morris said the Girl Scouts are “bent on Communism, lesbianism and destroying America.”
And who could forget Rush Limbaugh who called Georgetown student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for expressing her views on reproductive rights.
These people are not just stupid or insensitive, they are dangerous. They are in positions of power that influence or directly impact the lives of everyday people, regardless of whether you voted for them.
For the last 30 years, the Right has successfully moved us towards a corporate plutocracy where the 1 percent control the 99 percent. This is about the value of life, liberty and a better future for our families, not how much one can accumulate while destroying the whole planet for everyone else. The 99 percent must escalate our efforts to educate, agitate and organize our base and re-affirm our collective strength, wisdom and power.
