Last night, the Massechit, Massachusetss, American voters decided to give a big f*** you to Barrack Obama on the anniversary of his inauguration. For me, the worrying things is not that the Democrats have lost the supermajority in the Senate; it's that arguably the most Democratic state in the country returned a Republican a little over a year after the Democrats swept into power in a very convincing fashion.
To me, it seems like the US electorate liked to hear Obama talk about saving them and their families from massive healthcare bills, but when push came to shove the idea of someone having to pay for it through taxes seemed anathema to them.
From my basic reading of the plans before the House and the Senate, the proposals don't really look that redical at all. The vast majority of people will still pay their own health insurance or their employer will. Medicaid would only be available to those earning less than $30,000 (rough figure based on 4 person family). Yet still, Republicans get away with scaremongering; claiming that Obama is "socializing" healthcare.
I have two rebuttals:
(a) Compared to Public Health Insurance models, he really, really isn't.
(b) If there was one thing in the world to socialize; it's healthcare! You generally don't have an option about getting sick; and you can't say that this person or whatever "deserved" to get sick due to their lifestyle alone and therefore deserves to pay for it. Not only that but health is the most important thing to get right for people for without that they would be unable to access any of the freedoms they enjoy by living in the US.
I am confounded that the American people would vote again for the Republicans, who royally messed up their time in power in the last decade. This blow and the presumably heavy losses that the Democrats will endure in House elections in November will yet again freeze all hope of progress on this and the issue of social security. Huzzah for democracy, indeed.
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