Friday, July 28, 2017

Profiles in Compassion

Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and John McCain defied their President and their Republican Senate leadership and voted against the last ditch attempt by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  

Thank goodness.

I give a special salute to John McCain who postponed his treatment for brain cancer to come back to the Senate.  He voted Yes to allow debate and amendments to the Republican plans - a dignified approval of the democratic process.  And he voted No to the Republican efforts to overthrow Obamacare - a compassionate caring for the people of America.  His biggest message to Congress is to stop the blind dogmatic opposition to the Other Party, reach across the isle and fix and improve the current health care system.  Of course, that is the obvious solution. 

Obvious facts - repealing Obamacare will put somewhere between 15 and 30 million people without health care.  The conservative dismissal of that idea is that many of those people would be young and healthy people who don't want health care. 

But the liberal rejoinder is that without the healthy in the insurance pools the cost for the sick, the infants, and the elderly would be prohibitive and they would not be able to afford health care.  The result would be all of these people would not have regular check ups and would not have preventative health care, and they would end up in emergency rooms with advanced stages of illness and injury that would further drive up insurance costs, driving more people out of insurance, creating more unhealthy going to emergency rooms, etc. etc. etc.  

I side with the liberal argument because I believe it makes the most sense, and it is the most compassionate.

Unfortunately, the Heartless-In-Chief immediately declared he would "let" Obamacare fail - that is to say, he will continue his cruel sabotage of Obamacare.  States that worked constructively with Obamacare have had good health care, and states that sabotaged Obamacare have had bad health care for their people.  Those that will continue to sabotage the existing law will make life much more miserable and dangerous for their people.

But, today, I salute and honor these three Republicans with a heart.