They persecuted Barack Obama as soon as he stepped in the White House. They demonized him, called him a Muslim, a Communist, a non-American citizen, a monkey (because he is Black). The idiot senator from Kentucky O'Connell swore he would do everthing he could to make sure Obama fails. Obama tried to create a US-government-run health care system ALONGSIDE the private insurance sector, which would all US citizens to choose.
Aren't capitalists supposed to be for competition? Why wouldn't they compete with the government? The answers are that they prefer an oligopoly - where a cartel of a few insurance companies control the market and impose their conditions, prices and coverages.
Fighting hard for the US citizens, Obama tried but was forced to limit his "Obamacare" to a few significant but still modest reforms (eliminate the "pre-existing condition" clause that insurance companies used to deny coverage; allow parents to keep their children on their insurance until the age of 26, provide govt-subsidies to help the low income people with paying their insurance premiums to the private insurers, etc. Obama failed to create a wholly-owned government insurance program.
For the Radical Right GOP and MAGA, Obama became a socialist who wanted to destroy the "American way of life" which really boils down to keeping the USA as the United Scams of America.
As the piece below shows, the Republican-GOP-MAGA scammers and on the pay of lobyyists have been doing this for 80 years. They even fought Roosevelt to prevent him from creating Social Security and Medicare in the 1930s.
In essence, the American Dream is no more than becoming a slave to, and living on debt to, private corrupt and incompetent companies (banks, insurers, oil companies, etc.) whose primary interest is profit and shareholders at the expense of quality and service to people. When you wonder why Trump is doing what he's doing, you can always find the answer in greed, profit, and giving advantage to corporations at the expense of the average American.
=================================================
Opinion
For 80 years, Republicans have blocked us from fixing our health care system
Austin Sarat, opinion contributor
Mon, January 12, 2026
With the turn of the New Year, millions of Americans who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act have seen their premiums skyrocket. Last August, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s cuts to Medicaid and failure to extend insurance premium subsidies would mean that as many as 10 million would lose coverage by 2034. This year alone, that number could be about 5 million.
With Congress now back in session, the first order of business should be to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies. On Thursday, the House took the first step, passing an extension. At this moment, the prospects of passage in the Senate are not great.
But beyond the subsidies, we need urgent, comprehensive action to address the American health care mess. And it is quite a mess. As The Guardian noted on Dec. 31, “Costs, insurance delays, and difficult-to-obtain mental health treatment plague the US health system.”
The U.S. has an acute and growing shortage of primary care providers. A report from Harvard Medical School sees The growing to as many as 55,000 by 2033.
Doctors on the front lines of American medicine are overworked, underpaid and experiencing burnout. Congress can begin to address that problem by passing the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025. The act would expand the number of Medicare-supported medical residency positions by 14,000 over a seven-year period.
Congress should also provide increased funding for the Primary Care Training and Enhancement program, which supports training for doctors to practice internal medicine. But even these modest steps face fierce Republican opposition.
Meanwhile, we know that the U.S. has a lower life expectancy than peer nations despite spending far more on health care. Drilling down, obesity rates among adults in this country are in the 40 percent range. Our infant mortality rates infant mortality and cancer rates are higher than most industrialized countries.
More than 80 years ago, in 1945, President Harry Truman introduced a plan for a national health system funded through payroll taxes. His plan would have covered medical, hospital and nursing care for everyone, creating a federal health insurance agency to pay the costs of care. But it also would have put health insurance companies out of business.
Truman also wanted the federal government to support medical education and help give low-income people a chance to become doctors. He asked Congress to provide funding to build new health care facilities “in communities where they are needed.” His plan also included support for “public health preventive and disease control services, which are now inadequate in most areas and totally lacking in many.”
“The best hospitals, the finest research laboratories and the most skillful physicians are of no value to those who cannot obtain their services,” Truman observed. Yet he also knew the opposition would be fierce. “I put it to you,” he asked, “is it un-American to visit the sick, aid the afflicted, or comfort the dying? I thought that was simple Christianity.”
Christian or not, Republicans in Congress, rebelling against anything that smacked of the New Deal, wanted no part of Truman’s plan. They were backed by the American Medical Association, which branded it “socialized medicine” and countered with its own plan, which relied on expanded private insurance and federal aid to fund care for the poor.
Since then, Republicans have repeatedly trotted out the label “socialized medicine” to stop any effort to provide a comprehensive response to Americans’ health needs. With the exception of President Lyndon Johnson’s success in enacting Medicare in 1965, expanding private insurance has become the sine qua non of efforts to address those needs for three-quarters of a century.
Health care proposals from Presidents Richard Nixon (who wanted all employers to be required to provide health insurance) and Bill Clinton (who tried to revive a version of Truman’s plan) went nowhere. President Barack Obama secured passage of the Affordable Care Act only by expanding access to private health insurance — and even then, it passed by only one vote.
Almost from the moment it was enacted, Republicans have tried over and over again to kill the Affordable Care Act. And with their almost unanimous refusal to extend subsidies, they are hoping to inflict a grievous wound on it.
Truman would not be surprised. As he observed, in a speech in the last year of his presidency, “Meeting the health needs of our people is one of the most important ways we can make our American promises come true.” And as if foreseeing the future, Truman noted that Republicans never “come forward with plans of their own. … They just want to stand still, with things as they are, or they even want to move backward.”
Meanwhile, our health care mess continues.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
Trump says he may veto extension of Obamacare subsidies
By Julie Steenhuysen
Mon, January 12, 2026
Jan 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he might veto legislation to extend federal health insurance subsidies, injecting fresh uncertainty into a debate that has pitted congressional Republicans against Democrats and threatened to raise premiums for millions of Americans.
Expiration of the health insurance tax breaks at the end of 2025 left millions of Americans facing significant price hikes for coverage.
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed the Democratic-backed legislation that would restore the subsidies to the Affordable Care Act, with 17 Republicans joining Democrats.
The Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans, has already rejected a similar bill, but House passage could spur a compromise.
Americans have until January 15 to enroll in ACA coverage for this year, although the Trump administration could extend that deadline.
(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Tom Hogue and Sergio Non)
No comments:
Post a Comment