Blog For Iowa

Frankly, there are times that a person gets so mad that it is hard to think or write straight. Bear with me.

Death Bill

Don’t know what else to call it. What Republicans moved through the House earlier this month and are now trying to push through the Senate has little to do with health care and everything to do with cutting taxes for the rich.

The rich are the only ones who win with the Republican bill. America loses. If you don’t lose today you will be losing soon enough.

As a person age, he or she picks up conditions that insurance companies will exempt. Age itself is a condition that calls for dramatically higher, possibly even prohibitive premiums.

But that makes little difference to Republicans. Your health or mine is of little concern to them. Their concern is two-fold. First is huge tax cuts for their donors. The second is a form of punishment for those who do not fit their idealized and very fantasized version of humanity. If you have a human flaw you must pay the consequences for not being perfect. Too heavy, had cancer, have an injury, parents have health issues? Then you must pay!

This joke of a health care bill is only a portion of the punishment that Republicans want to dole out to Americans that don’t fit their ideal. The Republican budget proposal wants to end Social Security Disability Insurance to start with. Can you imagine that? If an American citizen has a tragedy in their life that leaves them unable to work Republicans want to say “too bad” and take away any financial help.

Very often such people are also dependent on a very skimpy allocation of food stamps to eat on. Republicans want to take that away, also. Anything that appears to help anyone who is not one of the chosen is on the chopping block.

While the yellow haired doofus who claims to be president runs around the world making outlandish speeches about terrorism, he himself delivers a health care bill that puts his own citizens in fear for their lives and a budget bill that will strip daily sustenance from another several million other citizens. While a terror attack may kill hundreds, this legislation could end up killing millions slowly.

As most of you know, Republicans King, Young and Blum voted to take health care away from (by the CBO scoring) 23 million by 2026 in addition to the 28 million that would not be covered by then. That is a total of 51 million without health insurance in 10 years.

Neither of our gutless senators will say how they stand. Based on previous votes we can easily assume both will vote for huge tax cuts for the rich while feeling very bad about cutting health care for millions and millions.

IT IS TIME FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!

We all know the arguments. Americans can get health care for all citizens for about 40% less than we pay now. Every other nation in the industrial world can do it and none are anywhere near as wealthy as America.

The resources that most countries value most are the intelligence of its citizens to create ideas and the health of its citizens to be able to execute those ideas. America values neither based on its policies of making good education and health care expensive and hard to access. In so doing it puts our citizens in fear and at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace.

Now is the time for Democrats of all stripes to push for universal health care while the stench of the Republican death bill and their proposed budget fills the air.

New York and California are at the forefront of moving to universal health care. While those two states are often cited as liberal, states such as Maine and Vermont have grass roots efforts pushing for universal health care. From inthesetimes.com

The Healthy California Act and the New York Health Act would establish improved Medicare-for-all-style systems in each state, eliminating out-of-pocket costs and guaranteeing comprehensive care to all residents. The California bill won approval from the Senate Health Committee in late April, and the Appropriations Committee is expected to vote on Thursday. Meanwhile, the New York Health Act has sailed through the Assembly and now awaits action in the Senate.

According to Ursula Rozum, upstate campaign coordinator for the Campaign for New York Health, the list of endorsing state senators has jumped from 20 to 31 since the start of the legislative session, bringing it just one vote shy of a majority. Rozum told In these Times that the bill’s success this session is at least partly a response to Trump’s regressive policies, explaining that “in this time of attacks on federal level, I think it helps to say look, we have something viable that could protect New Yorkers from the harms of the federal cuts to health care funding.”

These victories constitute a positive sign that state-based campaigns for universal health care ramping up across the country—and not just in states with progressive legislatures. In Maine, where Republicans maintain control of the Senate and voters have twice elected the far-right, proto-Trump governor Paul LePage, organizers are demonstrating non-partisan, grassroots political unity on the issue of health care.

And what about Iowa? We are larger than Maine with I believe a similar demographic. If Maine can start a movement for state universal health care why not Iowa? At least why not create a state public option to at least improve competitiveness.