The Battle Against Health Care

Republicans are battling to stop health care reform. I guess you cannot blame them as they are working hard on behalf of their constituency. I'm not speaking of the people who cast votes to get them elected. I'm speaking of their true constituents, the insurance industry, pharmaceutical industry and all of the other industries that lavish enormous sums of money on these politicians to protect their own profits. These politicians use the same old strategy that they have always used to stop progress. They frighten their slow-witted supporters. They use the same scary words ... "rationing" and "delays". They tell us that if a public option is included in health care reform, it will lead to those frightening things. As always seems to be the case, they are managing to fool their minions into voting against themselves with this "cry wolf" tactic.

Dictionary.com defines "rationing" as "the restriction of the consumption of a commodity." When 16 to 19 percent of Americans are without health care it seems to me that we are doing a fine job of rationing as it is. And as far as delays, how much longer of a delay can one expect than never receiving care? Yet the politicians who represent these industries that make huge profits off of our health or lack thereof, manage to use these same, tired arguments to talk Republican voters into voting against their own interests. Another two words that you can always count on hearing from Republican politicians are "tort reform". But again, they cannot be faulted, because once again, they are only representing their paying constituents. The threat of lawsuits encourages doctors, drug companies and big business in general, to behave more ethically. This threat is what encourages a surgeon not to amputate the wrong leg or leave a set of forceps inside of you and thus protects your well-being. Yet somehow, again, Republican voters stand in line to support these positions.

It occurs to me that these politicians are incredibly adept at convincing their informationaly-challenged hoards of followers to repeatedly vote against their own self-interests. It further occurs to me that no one has stepped outside of the box here. Anyone who is persuasive enough to get millions of people to repeatedly vote against their own interests is obviously a talented salesman. I'm thinking that one way to help fund health care reform is to send a supply of snake oil home with each of these GOP politicians. Since these politicians seem to be able to sell their Palinesque voters on just about anything, they could sell each one of the 58,343,671 people who voted Republican in 2008 a dozen $10.00 bottles of Boehner's Miracle Elixer and we would be well on our way to paying for our much needed health care reform.