I don’t pretend to be a political guru or to be particularly passionate or minutely aware of how politics work. I think I know enough to be informed, though I am ALWAYS trying to educate myself further. In fact, I very rarely read articles from my party’s perspective because I don’t want to be a brainwashed supporter: I want to be able to read an article attacking my party and my party’s candidate and be able to counter, not blindly agree with those who agree with me. So, when I came across an article about a 12-year-old boy who wrote a strongly worded letter to Romney attacking his plans for this country, I read it. The biggest issue at hand for his family seems to be the health insurance. I know this is something that a lot of people simply adore Obama for, but I thought I’d try my hand at a rebuttal to Obamacare.
I have a very close friend whose father is in healthcare (he is a doctor of some sort – excuse me for not knowing the technical title) and who is already seeing the very negative side effects of Obamacare. Did you know that pre-Obamacare, there were only a handful of medications that patients undergoing surgeries could not take for risk of serious complications? Well, since Obamacare, patients can take NONE OF THEIR prescription medication, even medications that pose little to no threat to the patient while under surgery. This means that even elderly patients on very important cholesterol or blood pressure medication cannot take that medicine before surgery – which, by the way, is bound to send cholesterol and blood pressure out of control. According to her father, people are dying far more often in routine surgeries simply because doctors cannot keep control of their blood pressure because they weren’t allowed to take their medication.
Oh, and how about the organ transplant process? Apparently, since Obamacare, patients who are cleared for organ transplant AND HAVE AN ORGAN READY cannot get that organ until their insurance is sifted through by the hospital. What does this mean? It means sometimes patients in dire need of transplants, cleared for that transplant and with the organ ready and available must wait up to weeks or even months before they are can actually undergo the surgery. Many times, the organ simply goes bad in that time. There’s a reason organ donations are done as quickly as possible and the organ placed on ice: organs are not canned beans. They will go bad very quickly, even when refrigerated. How many people have died because their perfectly good donor heart simply went bad at the hospital?
Obamacare wants to try to address every minute healthcare issue on a federal level, but that’s an impossibility. How can a government, which oversees millions of people over thousands of miles of the country in varying health, economic, and mental states, possibly provide for every single person in need? THEY CAN’T. That’s why it was NEVER the responsibility of the government to create welfare or handout programs or, more relevantly, to pass healthcare laws on behalf of the entire country. That’s like passing a law that every single college or university in the United States must offer the same exact curriculum. Well, what about private versus public schools? And how about graduate schools, medicine or law schools, tech schools, and vocation colleges? Should ITT Tech or Virginia College offer every single class that Texas A&M does, even though that’s not what students go to those schools for? Should Baton Rouge Community College, which has a few hundred students, offer the same exact curriculum LSU with more than 30,000 students? Or should LSU, a public institution, teach the same classes as Harvard or Yale, private (and let’s be frank, far more prestigious) institutions? And what about professors – should a school without access to an adequate quantum physics professor teach the subject with a subpar professor simply because another school has the option or because the government is forcing you to? Or should every school just nix the quantum physics option, even those with proper teachers? And these are just the logistical questions that don’t even consider every school’s physical space, number of students, tuition, and community. That is what Obamacare does. Obamacare created a one-size-fits-all plan that is supposed to suit all Americans, even though to propose such an option just seems absolutely ludicrous to me.
What’s the most hilarious to me is that people attack Romney for disagreeing with Obaamacare, saying that his “Romneycare” inspired Obama’s. I’m sorry, but you cannot simultaneously tell Romney that his healthcare plan inspired Obama’s while then condemning his healthcare plan. You just can’t. Speaking of which, Romney has commented many times on this issue: Obama may have used his plan as a jumping off point, but Obamacare does not reflect the core of Romneycare. Where Obamacare is working on a federal level, Romney’s plan works on a state level. Where Obamacare took trillions of dollars from pre-existing healthcare programs to fund his own, Romney’s does not. Where Obamacare raised taxes in order to make it a possibility, Romney’s did not.
This is all beside the fact that giving insurance and healthcare away just isn’t financially feasible. This country is based on the flow of money: simply doing thousands or millions of procedures for free or giving away millions of dollars in coverage for little or nothing is not a good economic plan. Just like giving away mortgage loans for houses to anyone who wants a loan isn’t a good business model (oh wait, that sounds familiar, too….) While I wish we lived in a world where everyone could be taken care of at least adequately, if not spectacularly, we just don’t. Money makes this world go ’round, and if you can’t pay for insurance, the burden of giving it to you should not be placed on others.
The biggest issue with Obamacare that I have personally has to be his stance on abortion. I am extremely pro-life and always have been and always will be. Now, up until very recently – like, a week or so ago – I truly believed that banning abortion throughout the United States was best for this country. However, I had a sort of epiphany: this can never nor would ever happen for a multitude of reasons, the biggest one being that to ban abortion would be akin to, well, forcing an entire country to accept a single healthcare provider. While I will always cheer when steps are made to taking away abortion or when abortion clinics are shut down, I understand that to completely get rid of them would be a sort of violation, despite my personal opinions about it. What I cannot accept from Obamacare is the plan to force me to pay tax dollars to fund abortions and abortion clinics. I am vehemently against abortion: to me, there is no reasonable instance in which abortion is okay. Yes, that means that rape victims, victims of incest, those whose lives are endangered by the pregnancy, or pre-term babies that show signs of problems. No, I’m not sorry for this stance. While I am just as appalled as the next person with all the talk that’s been going on about “legitimate rape”, by saying that abortion is okay in one instance, then that leads to being okay in more instances, until finally abortion is where it is now: any teenager whose condom breaks can walk in and get an abortion. This is simply unacceptable. Plus the fact that there have been studies that show that rape victims who keep their babies have a better time dealing with their trauma than those who abort, which is also true for those who were not raped but just decided to abort. A good percentage of women who decide to abort suffer guilt and emotional problems because of it.
So, that got a little off track, but my point is that Obamacare should not tell me that I have to pay for women across the nation to kill their babies (or, in technical terms, “terminate a pregnancy”). I am against it, I do not believe that it is ever the right decision, and I should not be forced to contribute to it.
The federal government was not created to see to every single need of every single individual. The federal government is meant to take care of the country as a whole: to act as a representative of the American people in times of war or crisis; to command and maintain the army; to coin money and keep track of the economy (which, by the way, Obama is also failing at, but that’s for another post); and to ensure that we remain a free country, free to live and pursue that gosh-darned happiness. The thing about that pursuit of happiness, though: nowhere in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence does it say that happiness is guaranteed or that we as Americans are entitled to it. We are free to try our damnedest to reach it, but that does not mean that the government is responsible for giving it to us.
Am I a heartless, unfeeling bitch? I don’t think so. It’s unfair that not every can get the treatment or medicine that they need because they can’t afford it. It’s unfair that not everyone can be healthy and that not everyone can get the healthcare they need. At the same time, it’s not our federal government’s responsibility to address that issue. It is the responsibility of the states individually. The states can do the most good by taking into account specific demographics, economics, statistics, and input from constituents. That’s what Romney’s plan is based on, and that’s what makes the most sense.
I have no delusions that this post will convert anyone or change any minds. Whatever comments I do get will be positive from the Romney supporters and vitriol from the Obama supporters. But silence equates to consent, and I can no longer remain silent. Too many times I sit at the lunch table and listen to friends praise Obama and curse Romney without saying a word because I know it’s not an argument I’ll win. Too many times I read articles and comments that just are not getting to the point and just exit the page. Not anymore. I’m standing up and saying what I think.
And hell, I didn’t even touch on his economic policies. Another rant for another day.
Chelsea Comments 