BY SHARON MARTIN
Watching the news or reading the newspaper usually has me quoting Shakespeare, you know, those lines from Macbeth, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Well, there has been a lot of sound and fury in the past month.
Let’s start with the healthcare divide. Does anyone else have a problem with legislators who want to kill healthcare reform after they vote themselves not only raises but good government insurance?
Arizona State Rep. David Gowan explained why conservatives don’t want to accept Medicaid expansion, even opposing their own Gov. Jan Brewer.
“We don’t believe in the expansion of Medicaid itself. It’s within the process of mandating health care. We don’t believe it’s the government’s duty to do that. It should be open for people to go get their health care.”
People can just go get their own health care? Do they know this? Why haven’t they done it already?
Then there’s the Ohio legislator who told Sister Carol Keehan that “the uninsured could go to community health fairs for basic preventive care.”
And trying to be even more helpful to the uninsured, the Ohio conservative said, “Sister, they can get their blood pressures taken at the fire station.”
I suppose the fire fighters can write prescriptions for blood pressure medication while they’re at it.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell bemoaned on the Senate floor as to how the IRS would be in charge of ObamaCare.
“For many Americans,” he said, “that’s going to mean submitting to probing questions about their health insurance. And if people at the IRS don’t like your answers? You’ll be hit with new taxes.”
Probing questions from the IRS? You mean like “how much money do you make and where did it come from?” Now, they’ll want to know if I have health insurance, too? I suspect this will be as intrusive as showing proof of car insurance in order to buy a car tag.
Then there is the question of disaster relief. Virginia has Rep. Eric Cantor, who will vote against his own constituents’ self interest. We have Sen. Tom Coburn.
Dr. Coburn, discussing disaster relief for Oklahoma on CBS’ Face the Nation, said, “We’ve created kind of a predicate, that you don’t have to be responsible for what goes on in your state.”
First, isn’t Oklahoma part of the United States, one nation? Second, who is responsible for these tornadoes? Do I smell another Benghazi here?
– Sharon Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
Well first with the healthcare situation people shouldn’t be required to buy something if they don’t want it. Second the irs also shouldn’t be in charge of finding out who has healthcare and who doesn’t. I mean the irs has enough power to see what people are doing, but having healthcare shouldn’t be one. Now, with the tornadoes, I completly agree that the people in Oklahoma need help with their resent diasters. It’s not like they asked for the tornadoes to come destroy their homes and other property.
I think people should try coming out of themselves and think as if they were in someone else’s shoes. There are people out here dying from cancer. They can’t get the help they need because health insurance is too high, Or because the little bit of health insurance provided only covers so much. People need to get down off of their high horse and have a heart.
I think that everyone should be over there own healthcare. Them making people get healthcare no matter what is not a good thing. There are people who work and still can not afford their daily living expenses let alone having to worry about healthcare as well. There are also some jobs that do not give healthcare insurance unless they employed full-time and I can say that not everyone is employed full time. With the jobs not hiring it is hard to get a full-time job, there are some that are just happy with a part-time job. Turning people away just because they dont have healthcare is also not right because we all have the same rights even those who do have the healthcare we should all be treated equal.