For roughly two years, national healthcare reform has been the law of the land – the country’s first attempt to implement fairness, decency and cost controls in an often predatory, anti-consumer healthcare insurance industry.
You wouldn’t know that by Tuesday’s vote by Michigan’s Republican-controlled House.
In what amounted to a Bronx cheer, the House voted overwhelmingly to reject a $9.8 million federal grant to continue the planning and development of the MIHealth Marketplace, a health care exchange mandated by the federal law.
This seems like a classic tantrum – a child holding his breath in hopes of getting extra dessert at the dinner table. Except, as noted earlier, this is the law of the land. Nothing will change. Michigan still has to set up the health exchange.
Just Michigan now has less money to do it.
There really is no reason for this, except that House Republicans seem to hate what they call “Obamacare” with every fiber of their existence. I’ve seen some House Republicans casually dismiss the federal law as some kind of bizarre, Stalinist holdover from the Soviet Union.
This shows a real lack of understanding of what Stalinism or socialism is, or what the new reformed system is in the nation – a private industry system, with a few regulations and many of the same predatory, anti-consumer faults that existed in the previous private sector healthcare system.
Political posturing aside, we essentially have the same healthcare system as before. Keep holding your breath, Republicans. If you pass out, healthcare will be on the way – if you can afford it.
