While the country awaits a decision from the Supreme Court’s nine justices on the latest legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act — otherwise known as Obamacare, Maobamacare, Obama Scare, Obummernation Care, and Socialist Hippie-Dippie Bullshit — many on the Hill are wondering just when exactly Congressional Republicans will unveil their highly-touted and self-promoted alternative to the landmark healthcare reform law that has helped see quite a reduction in the nation’s uninsured. Should the nation’s highest court rule based on semantics that the only way insurance exchanges can offer Federal premium assistance is if the state the exchange is in is run by the state government itself and not the Federal government, it could force some 8 million people to decide whether to attempt to keep up with their insurance payments, or whether they must let it drop, once the federal subsidies dry up.
Using our contacts in D.C., The Political Garbage Chute was able to make contact with the offices of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Aides for both congressional Republicans agreed to have their bosses co-author an essay in which they present the long-awaited Official Republican Obamacare alternative. What follows is the essay provided to The Political Garbage Chute, verbatim.
“The Official Republican Obamacare Alternative”
by Rep. Paul Ryan & Sen. Ted Cruz
The Republican Alternative to Obamacare is really quite simple: Go backwards.
Remember how great things in America were before Obama the Usurper came into power by way of being duly elected, only to usurp even more power by once again being duly elected in the same way that around 40 other people who held the office before him did? Of course you do. You’re an American. A God-fearing, ammo-hoarding, red-white-and-blue-flag-humping, dyed in the wool patriot! And so you remember how much better life was before the abomination of Obamacare.
There was a time when an HMO could charge whatever they wanted to their customers — er we mean patients — and the watchful eye of Big Brother wasn’t there to ensure that these patients actually primarily got health care for their premium payments, and not just the knowledge that they were helping the HMO’s executives buy their newest vacation homes instead. Remember how much greater health care in the U.S. was then?
Do you remember how great it was to work your whole life, retire, and then wonder if the hole in your medicare account would widen so much that the last five or ten years of your life you are constantly choosing between life-saving medications and life-sustaining food? Remember how amazing it was to know you could never get health insurance because of a condition you were born with and therefore had no control over? Do you remember what it was like to be 18 years old and having to wait for almost a decade to be earning enough money to get your own insurance policy instead of just staying on your parents’ plan until you were out of college?
How many of you remember how wonderful it felt not having insurance and waiting for the last possible moment to get health care, forcing you into the emergency room? Remember how awesome it felt for all of us who pay taxes to front the bill for the people who had no choice but to use the E.R. instead of their own primary care physicians?
It may be kind of hard to remember the good old days, since we’ve all been under the mind control of the Kenyan Communist Usurper in Chief. But trust us, these were America’s halcyon days, and we want to get us back there. Because nothing says “America” like for-profit companies masquerading as the caring middle men between you and your doctors while soaking you for every dime they can, and denying payment on your behalf every chance they get.
So our proposal is so very simple: We go backwards.
We go backwards through the Medicare doughnut hole. We bring back the paradigm of preexisting conditions. We kick kids off their parents’ health insurance plans because of some ridiculous, arbitrary line of where “adulthood” begins. We start telling poor people they have to get medical care at clinics and the emergency room because fancy-shmancy regular doctors are for the job creators. Only by going backwards can we truly take our country forward…into the status quo that previously existed.
America is about tradition. The tradition of slavery. The tradition of racist, jingoistic xenophobia. The tradition of genocide on the natives. The tradition of constantly attempting to hand control of the country over from the people who were elected to run it, to the people who’d like to buy the people who were elected to run it. And it is time we return to our tradition of profits trumping humanity.
So, won’t you join us, Red-Blooded, Ammo-Hoarding, God Fearing, Science Hating, Paranoid, Delusional American Patriots? Let’s go backwards, together*.
*offer not valid to members of the LGBT, minority, immigrant, female, young, liberal, socialist, pro-labor communities.
