Obamacare

Dear Mr. President,

I’ve been accused of being so far left that I’m now taking positions on the right. However, I believe I haven’t moved as far left as the country has moved right. I do occasionally find myself in the same camp as the right wing, not for the same reasons but for the fact that whatever the issue, it is simply wrong. That’s where I find myself now with the Affordable Healthcare Act, aka Obamacare, which Frank Bruni, in his Obamapologist editorial Tuesday called “landmark healthcare legislation, achieved through … fierce effort, meant to be a cornerstone of his legacy…” Landmark legislation? The cornerstone of your legacy? Excuse me? From out here on the Left Coast, it looks like a bailout for the insurance industry and Big Pharma. 35 million new customers is a pretty sweet deal for them, not so great for the consumer. You took the real landmark legislation—single payer healthcare/Medicare For All—off the table before it could even be debated. Medicare works. Medicare For All would have too and it would have been a real solution to the healthcare disaster in America. Here’s what someone said back in 2008: “… the reason people don’t have health insurance is not because they don’t want it. It’s because they can’t afford it.” You said those words when you were campaigning and they helped you get elected, but the emasculated bastardized legislation that you “achieved through fierce effort” is Republican to the core, hammered out behind closed doors with insurance moguls and pharmaceutical lobbyists. By almost every measure America’s healthcare ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations and is the most expensive. Obamacare does nothing to change that. It’s a gift to the for-profit healthcare industry that does little to rein in costs or guarantee decent and adequate healthcare for anyone. The irony is that after you capitulated to their demands, the Republicans blindsided you when they decided not to let you have any legislative victories even if they were their own long-held ideas. As I’ve said before, you’re the best president the Republicans have ever had even if they won’t admit it. No, I haven’t moved further left; the country’s moved further right and it’s lonely out here. One last quote from an article in a recent New Yorker: “… with the exception of raising taxes on the rich, virtually every major policy currently associated with the Obama Administration was, within the past decade, a Republican idea in good standing.” Case closed.