Cuing One of the Biggest Election Landslides in the Last 20 Years

Colorado College students yell 'Obamanos!' in 2008. They will be yelling even more if the new health care law is overturned by the Roberts Supreme court, and - along with tens of millions of women and the medically under-served, propel Obama to a landslide victory in 49 of 50 states.


It boggles the mind, at least the mind of the sane, as they peruse assorted columns, and gibberish spouted by the Republicans and their corporate consevative enablers. Evidently then, only a very few perceptive GOOpers appear to get it: that if the Obama Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is knocked down by the 5 conservo Supremes, or even if just the individual mandate is knocked down (essentially laying waste to the rest of the bill) then the Republican Party stands to be on the losing end of the biggest electoral landslide in the past 20 years come November. No ifs, ands, or buts!

This despite the fact that some of the detached- from -reality columnists (e.g. Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ, today 'The GOP's Health Care Eeeyores', p. A13), believe - to the contrary - that if the law goes down the Reeps can still prevail. According to her:

"The Republicans can argue that any fallout from partial or full repeal of the law - higher prices, the loss of some provisions - is the fault of a Democratic administration that strapped the market to a shoddily considered, partisan bill..."

Well, good luck on that one, Kim! But I'd suggest that before you count your chickens....errr...or 'elephants' ...you first get your team to hire some first rate PR firm. Say like 'Institute of Crisis Management, PR' - the bunch currently trying to salvage the rep of pink slime! (Hmmm......pink slime and repukes, kind of a symmetry there!) The fact is that any person not already brain- dead knows it was only Obama and the Dems that attempted to try to DO anything to change this nation's ridiculously messed up health care! All the GOP did is block every initiative, unless it was one that held the sick to private markets and ....escalated rejection via pre-existing conditions, and vastly higher costs! The worst travesty of all in this, is that the bill the Reeps ended up rejecting was effectively one that the REEPS themselves came up with!

This was as an alternative to what they dismissed as "Hillary care" in 1993-94, thereby waging their massive PR campaign while asserting THEIR (individual mandate) version was best.

THEN, when Obama decided to implement it....what do they do? They run as far away from it as if it was the original Hillary bill as opposed to what THEIR thinktanks (like Heritage Foundation) hatched!

Make no mistake that any voter that has more than 15 years of political history in his or her noggin will see what hypocrites the Reeps are and hence THEY will be the ones on the losing end come November.

This political negativity will be consolidated, reinforced as more and more people -families now benefiting from the law (e.g. the part that permits youngsters to remain on their parents' plans until age 26) see what else will befall them if the Roberts Supreme Court overturns even one part of it, but especially the crucial individual mandate.

For example, if the Roberts court overturns it, we will face a health miasma and a system in total chaos. Families, the very sick, the most vulnerable and children will once again be turned away because of having pre-existing conditions,......rubber stamped as anything from severe childhood measles to falling off a swing and breaking an arm.

The insurance companies will also be allowed to restore what they call "lifetime caps" - meaning that once your medical insurance pays out a cumulative total of say $150,000, maybe for pancreatic cancer treatment or chemo over 3 years, and the cap is at $150,000 - then you get no more treatment no matter how desperate, sick or near death you may be.

WHO do you think the victims will blame for this? Obama, who mightily struggled to get something done...or the Repukes who blocked everything that'd make a difference? (I give two guesses but the first doesn't count. )

Insurance companies will also likely cease payment for the cost of preventive services including: mammograms, flu shots, colonoscopies, and other well-child visits. Of course, the young adults - already saddled with massive college debt - will now have to contend with possibly massive insurance debt as well. Or, they could try going without and hoping they get no serious illness, or find themselves in a serious auto accident - say which makes them quadriplegic.

Even more dire, without the projected expansion of Medicaid, and facing measly state budgets, more than 32 million Americans will find themselves at the mercy of the fates and....charity clinics. But even 10,000 such clinics will not be able to handle the load, and let's recall many public clinics were cut last year because it was believed by the Reeps that military spending (say for a new combat air brigade at Ft. Carson, Colo.) was more important - at a cost of $1b, then spending $800 million on free clinics!

Beyond that will be the monumental added paper waste that will fuel an increase in our deficit - which, to hear the Reeps, is a very critical matter. Well, if that's so, why would you not do everything to contain monetary waste instead of wanting to overturn a law that controls it?

Consider: One huge cost-saving measure of Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was that it controlled the insurance companies medical loss ratio. This is the amount consumed by paper pushing (administration) and profits, which the law would limit to 15-20%. Without the law, as today's Denver Post Editorial observes, that fraction could easily rise back up to 30% or more. Possibly up to a third not being directed toward claims at all, but paper pushing and $10b a year in profits likely spent on fancy cruises to the Caribbean to entertain insurance money changers, investment banker moguls, PhrMA reps and new physicians, politicos.

WHO do you think the voters will be most angry with when they process all that, after the Supremes knock down the law? WHO?

And we won't even get into the 45 million child bearing-age women who will now also be denied access to affordable birth control. These women are already furious at how the Reeps have dragged them through the mud and associated birth control access with sexual excess.

Do the Reeps and those like Kim Strassel now believe all those women (voters) will be willing to forgive and forget? If so, then they're smoking something maybe way too strong to be legal.

The fact is if this court becomes activist* and knocks down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it will be the biggest impetus to Dem participation in the November election ever seen. Already the college kids, like at Colorado College, are getting organized (see photo) like they were for Obama in 2008. They know the Reepos offer nothing and believe in nothing that redounds to the benefit of ordinary workers and citizens.

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Footnote: By "activist" court I mean one that over reaches and upends the will of an elected congress. If the Roberts' court overturns the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or even the individual mandate in it, this will render it activist since it will have arrogated to itself the will of the congress that passed the bill. So, are we a nation for which congressional legislation means something, or a nation which allows high courts to trump that legislation?