"Dear Bites,
What do Fox News, and the Tea Party, and the GOP generally, have to say about the success of Romneycare in Massachusetts?"
Good question, and Bites has an answer:
My guess is, they parrot what Romney himself spun during the 2012 campaign and after: Massachusetts was a commonwealth where the overwhelming majority of citizens wanted a state-wide array of healthcare guarantees.
And, I suppose, the scale of a smallish state system is much more manageable than a nationwide one -- especially in a climate where vast majorities want it, and where a "bipartisan majority in both chambers of the state legislature" worked together with the governor's office to find workable formulas.
Several valid points in that line. Still, the one thing that I think crushes those Fox News & Tea Party nitpickings & told-you-so's these days, is that they have absolutely NO long-range alternative to 2 worrisome options:
1. Keep on following the pre-Obamacare track, which nearly everyone on both sides acknowledges is not sustainable, and will bankrupt the country unless the ever-expanding demographic of Senior Citizens is lined up and shot.
2. Start a conversation, at least, toward a more modern solution. Whatever its flaws, Obamacare is at least trying to do that, but I don't see the Georgia folks making any useful contributions to this discussion.
Have they thought upon that? As professed sturdy patriots of this democratic-republic of a country, which Lincoln called the Last Best Hope of Mankind? What contribution are these gloating naysayers making to what -- in the long run -- is most important?
SUGGESTION to Fox News & Tea Partiers:
Compile a list of all your Obamacare gripes, and CONVERT that list into a viable alternative which would help this country become stronger, sooner. And, with the following values, that we ALL [I think! or, do Tea Partiers think that only their sufferings matter?] hold dear, intact: compassion for the powerless little guy in the Georgia pickup truck AND the welfare mom in Watts [oh, wait! SHE brought on her troubles herself, unlike the Georgia pickup guy?], fairness, free enterprise, a representative republic striving for as much democracy as possible, with as small a central government as possible which can still deliver on countless daily necessities which Georgians & Mass-holes alike take for granted.
It may take another decade -- or more -- to work out the devils-in-the-details of a truly affordable, sustainable healthcare system that both maintains research- and application- excellence among American doctors AND provides care to as many democratic-republic citizens as humanly possible. Complaining Tea Partiers could speed this process up, if they stop getting consumed by their nostalgic hatred of all forces ruining their 1950's booming postwar white America, with that communist Eisenhower as president, who got Congress to pass a massive Federal Highway Act.
