by Iron Knee
Robin Evans, a Republican warehouse worker who recently signed up for Medicaid when Kentucky finally implemented the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, loves her new health coverage. “I’m tickled to death with it. It’s helped me out a bunch.”
But she hates Obama, and says she prefers Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who wants to repeal Obamacare, saying it should be “pulled out root and branch”.
Does Evans even know that if McConnell had his way, she would lose the health coverage she now loves?
Which gives us the ironic situation where people hate the word “Obamacare” while loving everything else about it. Heck, former Republican Senator Scott Brown even recently called for repealing Obamacare and replacing it with Romneycare. Which is funny since Obamacare is directly based on Romneycare and is virtually identical, the only substantive difference being that Romneycare was implemented by a Republican at a state level, while Obamacare was implemented by a Democrat at the national level. Brown has even said that current beneficiaries of Obamacare could be grandfathered in, which means he doesn’t dare actually repeal it, since that would be so unpopular.
The bottom line is that the word “Obamacare” has become a dog whistle term signifying dislike of our president. Even among people who love everything that Obamacare has done for them. There is no longer any chance of it being repealed, but there has been so much propaganda used against the term (“Death Panels”, anyone?), that it is still a potent, albeit hollow, weapon. Besides, it seems so much less racist to disapprove of his policy achievements than to disapprove of him.
UPDATE: Because of the ACA, healthcare spending is up 9.9%. In fact, without the increased healthcare spending due to Obamacare, the US GDP would have gone down 1%. And in addition to helping (saving?) the US economy, all that spending on healthcare will result in a healthier America, which has long had some of the worst health statistics in the developed world.
“Iron Knee” blogs at PoliticalIrony.com, a website “devoted to the ironic, humorous, twisted, hypocritical, and bizarre side of politics.” The author says it’s the perfect place to cure irony deficiency, humorrhoids, truth decay and irregular-hilarity.
