The frenzied farcical furor surrounding the technology challenged rollout of the latest phase of the Affordable Care Act would be laughable if the subject matter wasn’t so serious. The Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, was passed into law in order to address a critical challenge for the people of the United States – quality affordable healthcare being made available to a third of a billion people. While the record is quite clear that Obamacare has begun to address the healthcare inequities of Americans, the Usual Suspects are only too happy, indeed gleeful, to celebrate even any misstep.
A bit of historical perspective is always useful. At the beginning of the 20th century President Theodore Roosevelt advanced the concept of universal health care, an obvious product of the Progressive Movement that initiated so many beneficial reforms in these United States.
Since that time, many presidents, including Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton have all tried, and failed, to implement a universal health care system that would guarantee medical care for all Americans. And since that time virtually every developed country on this planet (and many that are not so developed) has implemented a universal health care system for its citizens.
When Barack Obama became president in 2009 over 40 million Americans had no medical insurance and millions of other Americans were hopelessly underinsured. And this societal disgrace existed in a country with the best medical technology in the world and the highest medical costs in the world. That the Obama administration was able to shepherd a healthcare bill through a Congress that was already careening towards the partisan poisoned train wreck that it is today, will one day be noted as a great legislative and political achievement.
It should be no surprise that the Teapublicans have led the full throated disparagement of every aspect of Obamacare. But they are silent when it is pointed out that Americans with pre-existing medical conditions can no longer be denied health insurance – an established procedure in the health insurance industry prior to the passage of Obamacare.
They are also silent when it is pointed out that, since the passage of the Affordable Care Act Americans can no longer lose their healthcare coverage when they are afflicted by a catastrophic illness. Dropping people with such illnesses from health insurance coverage was standard operating procedure prior to the passage of Obamacare.
And the Teapublicans simply don’t want to talk about the fact that millions of Americans can keep their children covered by the family health care plan until that child turns 26. This is another new feature that was the stuff of fantasy before the passage of Obamacare.
So why would the Teapublicans and their right wing cohorts want to repeal Obamacare? The House of Representatives has voted to repeal Obamacare 47 times. The right wing zealots who populate that chamber have shut down the federal government and taken the entire global economy to the brink of an unthinkable cataclysm – all in the name of derailing a law which provides healthcare to Americans.
It has to make one wonder what is it about Obamacare that makes the Teapublicans cross-eyed crazy? Can they be so opposed to children with cancer receiving healthcare? Are they that opposed to men, women and children being able to see a doctor without the specter of bankruptcy looming over them if they get sick? And, have the Teapublicans ever offered a credible alternative to Obamacare?
The answer to the last question is “no”. And the answers to the other questions are probably “no” as well. In which case it is clear that the magma of hate for President Barack Obama has spewed forth in a volcanic eruption of opposition, confrontation, disrespect and invalidation that continues to this very day as Teapublicans are holding up President Obama’s third judicial nomination to the United States Court of Appeals. And there should be no doubt that there is a racialist and racist source to the white hot magma that flows through the halls of power of Washington.
And now we are supposed to believe that the Teapublicans are caterwauling over the technological missteps in the next phase of Obamacare because they care about the healthcare of Americans being jeopardized. Their record of crass and senseless opposition to All Things Obama makes them all look like they are crying crocodile tears.
The computer failures of Obamacare will be fixed. Obamacare will continue to be the law of the land. More Americans will have access to affordable quality healthcare because of Obamacare. And the opponents of Obamacare will find themselves being footnotes to footnotes of history.
Point of View 
The Administration’s argument is that too many people prefer to be “free riders” — that is, they prefer not to pay for their own insurance while health care reaches an emergency status and is paid for in full by government services (such as emergency rooms).
These people, it is argued, want the security of health insurance while getting others to pay for it and while driving up prices with their emergency-only approach to health care
Wallace,
You seem to indicate all that’s wrong with Obamacare is that Barack Obama is Black. To know what’s wrong with ACA all you have to do is ask the President why he had to repeatedly, consistently lie (as far as I know, not exclusively a “Black Thing”) to the American people, prior to passing it. See the Federal Register 2010 and numerous, now revealed, White House internal memos and documents and see why if he said then, what we know now, the bill wouldn’t have passed and he probably wouldn’t have been reelected. Or why Nancy Pelosi’s (who is not Black) only fumbling answer to the question, what was in the bill? – was, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in the bill.”
Ask why the cost had to be brought in at under $1 trillion dollars and why that meant the $800 million dollar doctor fix couldn’t be a part of it. Why Medicaid had to be raided to the tune of $750 million to offset costs to achieve that random number.
Ask why 50 to 60, up to 80 percent of all the hundreds of millions of dollars of state exchange money goes to democrat party loyalists organizations, I.E. LaRaza, S.E.I.U. etc..
Ask the Unions why they suddenly went from screaming at the top of their lungs, extolling the virtues of the act to, a quiet letter which emphatically states, “we can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of the Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.” – James Hoffa (not Black).
Ask the members of congress and their staffs who demanded exemption from Obamacare, but received subsidies from our tax dollars as a consolation.
Ask Dick Durbin (not Black) why he doesn’t want to give up his Senate ‘first class’ healthcare and be put back into ‘coach’ with everyone else in Obamacare.
And ask why the Democrat’s largest constituencies, oppose cost cutting ideas like, competition across state lines, portability and patient participation at the user end of health services. And why the ACA’s Democrat supporters like the trial lawyers i.e. John Edwards, (also not black) turn a deaf ear to medical tort reform as a wholesale way to drop health costs and the expensive redundant practices it forces doctors to order.
And ask President Obama (half-black) why after 5 years in office he has not attempted to rescue 1 penny of the $500 billion dollars a year in fraud and waste he admitted was in the Medicaid/Medicare system.
Ask why, last month, Ted Cruz (not Black – Hispanic) was pilloried and called every name from a terrorist, agitator, insane to whacky bird for advocating a delay in the individual mandate, but today mainstream Democrat’s are calling for exactly the same thing but are given reasoned and balanced consideration by an, all too one-sided, press.
And lastly, ask any thinking person, Black or White or Yellow or Red, on the planet why they would trust the most important thing in their life, their own health, to a government who couldn’t run a lousy website with 3 years and $630,000,000.00 dollars of yours/mine/ours money.
Alas poor Yorick, the answer is not in the race of our president. The answer is that the very basic proposition, that of effective, efficient, secure government control of healthcare (much less a website) is ludicrous and not possible. That’s why in order to give 30 million additional people insurance – not healthcare – insurance, over 100 million will be forced to change to higher priced, lesser coverage, higher deductible plans. It’s nothing but redistribution of wealth through health. See Pol Pot (not Black) – Cambodia.
Tom Avitabile