July 14, 2012
Saturday

The most recent action of our US House of Representatives to repeal the Health Care Act reminds me of that Rolling Stones song about a spoiled adolescent who cannot reason:

It applies almost perfectly to the tiresome tantrums of the Congress trying to repeal something that they were responsible for creating. Only in this case it is not the nineteenth time, but the THIRTY FIRST.

Could they possibly think that no one noticed the first time they voted to repeal the Health Care Act?

Does re-balloting the same issue another 30 times really impress anyone in a positive way?

It would be funny, except that this comedic opera is being acted out at great expense to the people who elected them office to behave like mature and responsible public officials.

Anyone who reads the facts will discover that Obamacare as it is derisively referred to by the House leadership, is not a creation of President Obama at all. President Obama merely suggested that Congress should act to reform health care. The Act passed by Congress was in fact drawn up first by the House of Representatives, then enacted in that same body after the Senate version came back to it, by a majority reconciliation vote of both chambers.

I am sure that president Obama would have preferred a single payer system or a socialized health care system as most wealthy developed countries in the world have at half the cost of our own.

The version of the Health Care Act passed by both houses of Congress in 2010 is remarkably similar to the one promoted and enacted in the state of Massachusetts when Mitt Romney was governor. Lest we forget, Governor Romney was a principal advocate of the individual mandate at that time. Mitt Romney now is also publicly acting out his own theatrical drama, promising to repeal the Health care Act passed by Congress and recently upheld by the US Supreme Court.

To educated people all over the world, this kind of adolescent posturing and failure of reason by our elected officials gives the impression of a dysfunctional government which abuses the welfare of its own people and drags down the US economy and that of many other nations with it.

Wouldn't it it be more constructive if the US Congress would instead enact regulation that will better define and guarantee the provisions of the Health Care Act as it stands? For instance, measures that protect Americans and small businesses from the profiteering antics of health insurance companies?

Why should private health insurers have a guaranteed market while consumers are not guaranteed fair prices?

The privatized health care system will always be a drain on the economy until the benefits of a free market are enforced for the public that pays for it.

Michael Spence
Ketchikan, AK

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