gracchusdixit

In just a few days, Republicans in Congress, spurred on by a small minority of the electorate, may force the government of the United States to shut down, and if that doesn’t accomplish their purpose, may even wreck the financial reputation of the nation.  All this, to stop the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. “Obamacare,” from taking effect.

It does not seem to matter to Republicans that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land.  It does not matter that the Act has been deemed constitutional by a Supreme Court that is at least as conservative as they are.  It does not matter that in the last election their presidential candidate was resoundingly rejected and more Americans by far voted for Democratic Senatorial and Congressional candidates.

Lacking a mandate from the voters, Republicans nonetheless claim to be “listening to the people”.   Instead of listening, they are merely pandering to a fearful and suspicious electorate which has little real knowledge of what the Act is intended to accomplish or how it will work—if it does.

Republicans have accused the Affordable Care Act of being everything from a “job killer” to “socialism,” none of which is even remotely the case.  Indeed, they have yet to articulate any truthful, logical, or substantial objections to the Act.  Rather than presenting arguments or facts, all they have given us is cliches.

The question therefore arises:  what are they so afraid of?

In a moment of unexpected—and for a supposedly smart man, remarkably dim-witted—candor, Ted Cruz of Texas told us.  He, and the tea party he hopes to lead, are afraid that benefits, once given, will be difficult to take back.  To his discredit, he swaddled this uncontroversial objection with insinuations designed to fuel the racism and class animus of his constituents:  the Act will be another undeserved “entitlement;” it will be a government give-away to those who haven’t earned it; it will penalize the hard-working middle class, by which he really means the old, white bigots who form the core of the tea party.

Some speculate that Republicans are afraid the Affordable Care Act, rather than producing the “train wreck” they predict, may actually work, in which case it will be, not difficult, but impossible to repeal.  That may well be the case.  But the truth runs deeper.  What Cruz and his co-conspirators truly fear is that successful implementation of the Act could become merely the first step toward the eventual replacement of our shamefully inadequate system of market-driven medical care.

Far from having the “best medical care in the world,” we are burdened with a system that is a sham and a scam.  We pay substantially more for medical care than any other advanced country; yet our basic health statistics lag woefully behind.  The only metric by our health care system indisputably leads the world is profit:  profit for insurance companies, profit for drug companies, profit for hospitals and the conglomerates that own them.  It’s a wonderful system for the wealthy and the healthy; for everyone else, it’s a disaster.

The rest of the world knows this.  That is why the government of every other advanced country either provides health care to its citizens directly or heavily regulates those who do.  That is why so many of those countries pay significantly less and get significantly better care in return.

That is the reality they Republicans are so afraid of.

They demonize the Affordable Care Act as government interference in the private market, which they would like us to believe can solve all our problems.  What they realize, for all their rhetoric, is that the market has proved itself utterly incapable of providing decent, cost-effective medical care to the American people.  It isn’t government interference that scares them so much.  It is government success.  They are determined to prevent it, even if they have to destroy government itself.