As Barack Obama's approval rating continues to descend into the netherworld pit normally occupied by used car salesmen, child molesters and the U.S. Congress it is becoming clearer by the day that Obamacare is the largest vat of snake oil ever sold to the American public. Policies are being cancelled and blood sucking insurers are already wailing about a loss in profits due to delays in with implementation. The big fascist government just can’t deliver the yoked and chained chattel to the man fast enough to book those holiday bonuses. It is already an unqualified disaster – except to insurance companies who despite their current whining over delays will soon have millions of new customers, forced to buy a product from their private corporations with the threat of government enforcement providing the muscle. The mafia could only dream about having it this good.
I already have spoken to a number of people who I know personally who are getting the screws put to them by the greedball corporations that they work for over huge rises in health insurance premiums, particular when covering spouses or partners. The so-called tea party as led by big money funders, many with links to the Bircher Koch Brothers have repeatedly used the lie that Obamacare is “socialism”, a word that has been practically rendered meaningless so distorted has it become in the Homeland. That anyone can actually take seriously attacking Obamacare under this pretense shows just how asinine and gullible that the shock troops for big money actually are. We live in a hybrid socialist society, what the hell do people think that the police and fire departments or in cynical political speak “first-responders” are? None of the dummies marching around with their anti-Obamacare, anti-Socialism signs and placards understand this which they should on a basic level. I mean come on now, how many of them and the demographics are skewed with the age of the average tea partier being older would put their money where their mouths are and if they are so opposed to “socialism” then give back their Medicare and Social Security checks to balance the budget? Take a stand on principle which is pretty rare on the big star-spangled lemming farm. I doubt that the lines would be forming anytime soon.
The only level that Obamacare IS “socialism” is that it is the modern American form where the besieged and vanishing middle class continue to be shaken down to subsidize the corporations and the rich who can buy political influence. We do have “socialism” but in this down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, bizarro version of America it is inverted. That is the truth about his insipid scam of a health care “reform” program as it is with everything else these days – it all benefits those who have the means to purchase political influence in Washington, statehouses and courthouses.
The intent of the Orwellian named Affordable Care Act is of course to allow corporate America to kick employees to the curb and into the jaws of the ravenous health insurance industry parasite. Obamacare is to American health insurance with TARP and QE-forever is to the Wall Street banksters. Hell, let’s have some real socialized medical care, screw the bullshit Republican talking points and give me the Veterans Administration which really is socialized medicine. The facilities are owned by the government and the doctors are paid by the government and goddamn it, if it’s good enough for our precious troops then it should be good enough for everyone. Death panels? Hogwash, the real death panels are within the private insurance companies who are able to buy government access and use their congressional embedded shocktroops as defacto lobbyists to write the damned laws.
Americans need a national health care system that is honest, not this crony capitalist horseshit that Barry and the boys have rammed down our throats in the interests of placating campaign donors. The sooner the better too, given that Obamacare has now been revealed as a national debacle that will only accelerate the economic collapse. I can see no reason why people don’t get behind it, let’s see our damned tax money put to work actually providing something other than graft to grease the wheels of a corrupt system and the bombs to blow brown skinned foreigners to kingdom come. But there is good news, as the drop notices arrive in people’s mailbox and the open enrollments for employer health insurance programs show the real intent of this massive con job with the spike in dependent care rates people are starting to get it.
Even the liberal comedians are turning on Obama over the ACA fiasco, first it was Jon Stewart and most recently HBO’s Bill Maher who called bullshit on Barry’s DNC head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz for her defending of the indefensible.
“Obama had a great, I would say, almost sterling reputation for honesty…but I just think that credibility to a certain extent, that ship has sailed,” Maher said on his HBO program “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Wasserman Schultz dismissed claims that Obama misled Americans.
“It was not a lie, let’s just be very clear. So let me knock that down right away,” Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said. “When the president and myself and every other Democrat that talked about that if you like your health care, you can keep it, that was referring to the overwhelming majority of Americans who had health care.”
Maher, who criticized the president earlier this week for lying, pushed back and argued that plans — albeit “crappy”— were being canceled under the new law.
“C’mon, let’s be honest. Obamacare says, basically, if you have a really crappy plan, you can’t keep it. That’s the truth,” Maher said. “But some people want crap, what can I say? And because of Obamcare, they are not being able to keep it. To me, that is a lie.”
Wasserman Schultz acknowledged “there was a minimum floor of benefits” so that Americans aren’t “all paying, at the end of the day, for everybody else’s health care.”
She called the debate over whether Obama lied as “arguing over minutiae,” a point Maher pounced on.
“To a lot of Americans, it’s not minutiae and I think they’re insulted when [they] hear [you] say that because they think it’s something important when the president doesn’t square up with them,” Maher said.
Not that I agree with much of what he says as he to this day remains the penultimate party hack but the old warhorse Pat Buchanan righteously railed against Obama’s latest lie in his piece The First Hustler Runs the Big Con:
All along, it had been a bait-and-switch by the first hustler.
In Boston, Obama could no longer evade the truth. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who had purchased health insurance in the private market were getting notices their plans were being canceled.
That this revelation had blown a hole in his credibility did not seem to trouble Obama. Indeed, the president appeared impatient with the complaints. These were “substandard” plans anyhow, he said, the lousy offerings of “bad-apple insurers.”
“So if you’re getting one of those letters (canceling your insurance plan), just shop around in the new marketplace. … You’re going to get a better deal.”
Behind the arrogance is the realty: Obama has the veto power. No alteration of Obamacare, except for changes he approves, can be made before the winter of 2017. And by then, Obamacare will be so deeply embedded in law and practice it will be beyond repeal.
We won, you lost, was written across Obama’s face.
Yet, Obama’s victory calls to mind that of King Pyrrhus of Epirus over the Romans at Asculum as described by Plutarch. Counting up his dead friends, dead commanders and dead soldiers, the king remarked, “One more such victory and we are undone.”
The price Obama will be a long time paying for this victory is historic and huge.
First, there is the irreversible damage to his credibility and integrity. He conned the people into believing something he knew to be false — that all Americans would be allowed to keep the health care plans that they had and liked.
Come on Pat, the bastard lied about closing down our Guantanamo Bay penal colony/torture camp, the first of years of prevarications, misrepresentations and bullshit meter pegging total whoppers. Who, outside of liberal cretins and useful idiots can possibly believe on damned word that flies out of this man’s mouth? He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has proceeded to participate in the drawing up of kill lists for his cowardly drone attacks. He lied about Wall Street being held accountable for wrecking the economy while his administration continued to shovel the taxpayer funded gaming chips into the ivory tower casinos of Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon. He lied about the Syrian regime gassing children at Ghouta and he is lying on a daily basis about his NSA Stasi. Jesus Christ, the man will call the night as day and piss down your back and tell you it is raining. What in the hell does Buchanan think that the primary qualification of the office is (other than war criminal), he worked for Nixon for God’s sake.
Obama has lied about this abortion of a health care “reform” since its inception. It is nothing but another giant corporate gift and the ordinary schmucks again get the shaft. Were this any serious effort to reform the system – and mind you that the existing private insurance con game that fills the coffers of middlemen while spending little on actual health care – it would have included a PUBLIC OPTION along the lines of Medicare. American business are at a continual competitive disadvantage in having to compete with countries that have a national health care system, this may be anathema to many of the free-market types but it is punitive to domestic business. Throw in the NSA debacle and the now in process flight from American tech companies who cannot be counted on to provide secure access and the future is very bleak indeed for what is left of American capitalism. It was Halloween a few days ago and the ghost of Karl Marx must be hoarse from laughing at what American greed has done to capitalism, it no longer exists.
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