It's killing Real Americans already
by digby
In case you were wondering what the GOP "big picture" propaganda is going to be on Obamacare, check out this article in the Atlantic about Ted Cruz's apocalyptic vision:
In an interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace at the Washington Ideas Festival, Cruz said he planned to introduce a bill to repeal and replace the three-year-old health-care overhaul law and dismissed Democratic efforts to find a legislative fix that will to undo its impact on the existing private insurance market, where millions of insurance plans have been cancelled.
"You're seeing lots of Democrats scrambling and they're coming up with lots of proposals and they're all named clever things: 'If you like your plan you can really, really, really keep it.' Listen, I don't think people are interested in some cosmetic Band-Aid. Most of these plans have a good title, but if they passed into law, they'd do next to nothing for the millions of people who have lost their health care. And the thing about Obamacare, the five million who've lost their health care right now is just the beginning of this," Cruz said.
"One of the next shoes that is going to be dropping is you're going to see more and more people realizing they can't keep their doctor. Texas oncology, one of the very best cancer centers in Texas, has just announced it's not going to participate in Obamacare. I've gotta tell you, I've got people who are close friends who are cancer survivors who are discovering now they can't go to their cancer doctor because Obamacare has denied them their doctor," Cruz continued. "That's the next shoe that's going to fall."
This spring, he argued, the public would see premiums go up dramatically. "And then the shoe to drop that I think is most damaging, potentially, is the 90-plus million people who have employer-provided health care. I cannot tell you how many HR directors at big companies have said they're just getting ready to dump their employees off of their health care and onto these exchanges.
"The trade-off that Obamacare was all about—that the president was not honest with the American people about—it was a trade-off that was focused on providing insurance to part of the group of Americans that didn't have insurance. And that is a noble goal," Cruz said. "But that trade-off to provide insurance for tens of millions of people... is that they said we're going to screw up the insurance of the remaining couple 100 million people. I think that's a terrible trade-off."
This is a good one: "I've got people who are close friends who are cancer survivors who are discovering now they can't go to their cancer doctor because Obamacare has denied them their doctor." It's already killing people and it hasn't even taken effect yet. Unfortunately in a couple of months it will be in effect and they'll sound less ridiculous even if their silly claims are based on their own fever dreams.
But what you have to pay attention to is that last paragraph. He's setting the table for every complaint about health care in America going forward to be blamed on the you-know-whos --- the "dependent" ones who keep taking from the Real Americans who really deserve it.
Not that they wouldn't have done this with the individual market anyway. After all, liberals make that very argument all the time. But Cruz is going to take it way beyond any reality and say basically that the government is having bad people steal everyone's health care against their will. In other words, the welfare queens and wetbacks are now trying to kill you. It's the fundamental basis of their arguments against government in general and feeds directly into their lizard brain fear of losing their privilege.
Obviously, not everyone will buy this line of malarkey. But it will feed right wing angst and will give them fodder for their anti-government crusade. And things could get dicey during this transition -- the 2010 energy seems to be coming back under the careful stoking of the GOP. There's not a lot Democrats can do about it except hope that everything settles down in the next few months, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
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