So, imagine you’re Lynn Frazier. You have found yourself unemployed and without insurance for the first time in over a decade. You are also a republican. You attend Thursday night’s Florida GOP Primary Debate and you get to ask the following question:
“I’m currently unemployed and I’ve found myself unemployed for the first time in ten years, and unable to afford health care benefits. What kind of hope can you promise me and others in my position?”
Great question, right? In front of you stands the four people who have consistently told you that “Obamacare” has got to go to head off the socialist revolution that no one outside of lamp-post scratchers and the people who talk to trees seem to be aware of. If you’re Lynn Frazier, you have a pretty good idea of what they are against as it relates health care (i.e., whatever Obama proposes), but what do they have to offer as an alternative to the most vulnerable, like Ms. Frazier?
Here are the answers she recieved:
NEWT GINGRICH: She ought to get the same tax break whether she buys personally or whether she buys through a economy. She should also be able to buy into an association so that she’s buying with lots of other people so it’s not single insurance, which is the most expensive kind.
MITT ROMNEY: What we should do is allow individuals to own their own insurance and have the same tax treatment as companies get. You do that and people like this young woman would be able to own her insurance. The rates would be substantial lower for her buying it individually than if she had to buy it individually today.<
RICK SANTORUM: All three of these folks sound great and I agree with them. I would just add that health savings account, which I introduced 20 years ago with John Kasich, is really the fundamental reform of getting consumers back involved in the health care system.
Nevermind that two of those people (Newt-Romney) have supported an individual mandate at either the state or federal level, and that one of those two (Romney) created the template for Obamacare, just wipe that from your memory and ignore those pesky things called ‘facts.’ No, what all four of the GOP candidates are suggesting is that the woman buy the insurance on her own through “the free market.” In other words, they are essentially offering the same shit that has been available all those years pre-Obamacare. Which let’s be honest, that was working out great…right?
What they offered her is the you’re “on your own” health care plan. Well, you and the “people first” insurance companies waiting to service you. Yes, each candidate suggested that their method would reduce costs–in ways that were not unique, or untried and shown as insufficient, or debunked by experts–but they all skipped over the essential point of her question: That “unemployed” part. Oh, each of them did suggest that the best thing would be to get the economy going and get her back to work so she could afford insurance, but what about right now? What would they do for someone who lacked the means to purchase health care benefits from the oh so benevolent insurers that are so eager to take her money and maybe, just maybe, provide her with the occasional service as long as it wasn’t too expensive, experimental, or disqualifying due to pre-existing conditions?
If you are Lynn Frazier, what the four candidates basically told you is get a job and buy insurance on your own. Of course, your entire point is that at this very moment, you don’t have one and because of that, you can’t afford the other, but let’s not focus on that. What was perhaps even more interesting is how Ms. Frazier responded to the four remedy free responses offered by the candidates…she clapped.
She clapped for four people who offered her nothing.
As my friend and fellow AI contributor, Vince Yanez often says of those who vote against their own interests, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
Wonder how much she got paid to do that bit?
The question was a good one. Their answers were just about what you’d expect from those jerks. But the fact that SHE CLAPPED??? How did she not come back with “WTF? That’s absolutely NO HELP!” Of course, if she had said something like that, I’m sure there were thugs to escort her out the door.
Huh? Where’s the hope? Where’s even a straight answer?