In your patriotic zeal to make plans that would inadvertantly burn down your whole neighborhood with real fireworks this July 4th, you probably missed that Republican Congressman Mike Rogers stopped by WHMI Monday to talk to us about the evils of Obamacare, and how any plan that doesn’t put your health in the hands of greedy capitalists and their profit margins is basically the most disastrous plan ever for freedom.
Here is a helpful blurb, in which Rogers is basically like “Duh, we already have a pre-existing clause in Michigan for health insurance so, like, what’s the big dealio, sicks? Just buy you some if you want to live.”
“There are 38 states, including Michigan, that have pre-existing condition clauses in order to sell health insurance… so some notion that they gave us something new and exciting is just wrong, but they’ll sell it because it polls very well. Who doesn’t believe — I’m a cancer survivor — so who doesn’t believe in this preexisting condition? Everybody believes it but we already have that. It’s already on the books.”
Welp, that’s that. Problem = solved. It’s already on the books, you guys! Sick people should just buy the health insurance at the increased rates that were charged pre-Obamacare and then we can just forget this whole nightmare socialist experiment in medicine ever happened, k? K.
As Rogers likes to point out over and over again — because, let’s face it, only jerks verbally attack cancer survivors and their baseless notions — he developed bladder cancer at age 19. Due to the lifesaving benefit of having health insurance (unlike 45 million other people), he went on to survive to become possibly the lyingest liar who ever lied about other people’s health insurance, or lack thereof. It’s kind of crazy how life is a circle like that sometimes, isn’t it? It basically proves that it’s possible to overcome a life threatening illness and still become a leader who gives approximately zero fucks about the health concerns of your constituents and their families.
Yet, perhaps Congressman Rogers truly is not this ironic super-villain like person who puts his own political self-interest above granting uninsured sick people the very same care that once helped save his own life from cancer. Perhaps, as was suggested later by hosts Mike and Jon of the “Marino and the Morning Crew”, who interviewed both Rogers and his Democratic opponent, Lance Enderle, he just has “a different take on it” — which is to say that perhaps he has the take on it of a complete and utterly misinformed moron. But I say let’s give Rogers the benefit of the doubt here, agreeing that very few people make it to his rank being that that stupid for real. So we will just go with ‘liar’ instead.
“The problems have been enormous already,” Rogers said during the program. “And so the things that kick in later are other high costs things, which means that you lose your healthcare in 2014 — you have to go to a federal exchange. They have put in place all the incentives for small business to drop your healthcare coverage.”
Really, just go right now and listen to the rest of the interview and hear all about how Barack Obama spent the 4th of July raising money in socialist France of all evil places (he didn’t), and how old people on Medicare will be stone cold dropped by their doctor, all because of Obamacare and not at all because of the February bipartisan clusterf*ck known as the payroll-tax can kick (that Rogers actually voted in favor of) that will slash Medicare payments to doctors next year by 32%. Funny how he failed to mention increased tax credits for small businesses upwards of 50% to supplement premium costs, partial rebates for coverage costs that require 80% of premium dollars to be spent on patient care, and the option to pool in with other employers to negotiate better rates in the exchange (coming in 2014). But yeah, what small business owner would even think any of that is a good idea?
Also mad props to our local media for not bothering to challenge him on any of this. Perhaps you should learn to use the internets and do some homework before a congressman comes on your show to blow smoke up your ass.
“There are plenty of water fountains to go around — why is everyone complaining?”
Mike’s the kind of schlub that in 1960 argued that we didn’t need to pass any Civil Rights acts because there were already perfectly good laws on the books.