That same day, we walked from the White House to theNational Mall with tens of thousands of immigrants and their supporters wavingAmerican flags to demonstrate their desire to be included as equals in acountry where they often encounter hatred.
“No Human Being Is Illegal,” said one particularlymoving banner.
With so much idealism in the air, I couldn’t resistasking a few simple questions of a couple of stray Tea Party demonstrators whenI found myself standing next to them waiting for a light to change. The man andhis wife looked like average, middle-class, white Americans. But they had goneto the trouble to make two enormous signs demanding “Kill the Bill!” and “Stopthe $ Madness!” They were lugging them for blocks toward the Capitol.
I asked them if they had health insurance. When theysaid yes, I asked: “Aren’t your co-pays and premiums going up outrageously theway ours are?”
The man said, yes, but only because his employer hadswitched insurance companies. Apparently, he didn’t know that employerstypically switch insurance companies because rates would have increased evenmore had employers stayed with the old company.
His wife said health care costs would come down ifinsurance companies were permitted to sell policies across state linesaRepublican proposal to increase the profits of big insurance companies thathealth economists agree wouldn’t do much of anything to reduce costs.
I was happy for the couple and all the rest of uslate that night when the House of Representatives finally approved health care reform.
Clueless opponents didn’t know it, but the bill theywanted killed was the first step in reducing unsustainable cost increases thatindividuals, employers and every level of government would have had to facewithout reform.
Make Republicans Explain
Republican opposition to health care reform couldonly work for them politically if the Democrats failed to pass the bill.
Then the “Party of Hell No” could claim to be theheroes who prevented Democrats from putting grandmothers to death and bulldozingthem into mass graves. They could paint themselves as American patriots whostopped the Socialist takeover of the United States.
But, with the passage of health care reform, we havenot become a totalitarian state. We are still a democracy led by a successfulpresident voted into office by an overwhelming majority of Americans.
Republicans, aided by the media, were verysuccessful in scaring people with lies about death panels and other imaginarycatastrophes that were never going to happen. But if Republicans really dointend to make repeal of health care reform a big issue in the midtermelections, they will have to make a case for repealing lots of actual resultsbenefiting almost every American.
Let Republicans explain why they are against peoplewith pre-existing conditions having access to health insurance, why they thinkinsurance companies should be allowed to drop people when they get sick, andwhy insurance companies should set arbitrary limits on how much they pay out soserious illnesses drive even insured families into bankruptcy.
Republicans can’t even use their disingenuousargument that we can’t afford health care reform since the nonpartisanCongressional Budget Office says the law will reduce the federal deficit $138billion the first 10 years and $1.2 trillion the next 10 years.
And surely even many conservatives who generallyoppose government programs that help others have been turned off by the uglyracism, spitting and brick throwing by some of the more extreme elements eggedon by Republican leadership.
Coming back home, Wisconsin Republicans seem to beputting themselves in the same “Hate Health Care” box as Republicans havenationally.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, running forthe Republican gubernatorial nomination, has predicted that repeal of healthcare reform and preventing Wisconsin residents from receiving its benefits“will be the defining issue in the general election” for governor.
Former Congressman Mark Neumann, Walker’s Republicanopponent, apparently thinks if you keep stating the exact opposite of thetruthclaming that health care reform will result in an “explosive growth inthe national debt”you can fool some of the people all of the time.
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who issupposed to know the law, went through the phony political charade of askingthe Democratic governor and Democratic Legislature to authorize an expensivestate lawsuit to try to overthrow federal law passed by a Democratic presidentand a Democratic Congress.
The longer Republicans fight health care reform, thebigger losers they will be.
No human being is illegal, but failing to provideaffordable health coverage to human beings in America is about to be.
