Little pink houses for you and me...

One of the many under-reported stories from the world of politics is what Republicans plan to do if they gain control of Congress.  

 Oh, we all know what the GOP is against…they have been holding a clinic on how to leverage the preserved failure of those currently in power to gain support. 

But I just read this article on StlToday.com about how the GOP plans to dismantle health care reform…and, well it’s one of the few pieces out there chewing on the crucial question of what the fuck the GOP intends to do with the power they seek.

This is huge…massive…beyond important…because this is what voters will really be deciding in November.

And the GOP’s definition of “reform” is to repeal, rollback and restrict – to block implementation of health care reform by any means necessary.

Pause…sip coffee…continue.

Should they gain power, the GOP would first tackle the mandates.  They intend to destroy mandates for businesses to offer health care coverage and for individuals to purchase health care insurance.

And they acknowledge that, by denying funding and blocking the power of panels, they can pretty much starve the few health care reforms Congress managed to pass to death.

The GOP acknowledges that some measures within health care reform are popular...protections for people with pre-existing conditions, for example.

But it is important to understand that the GOP never accepted the premise of the argument for health care reform – that health care is a right.

Hell, more than a couple of Democrats didn’t accept that either.

And as the GOP gets their strategy development on in hopes of seizing power, they are walking down the road the nation just traveled…’round the same curves that take them past the millions of people without health care coverage, the workers who do not receive coverage from their employer and the many Americans who seek care for a crisis because they weren’t able to afford treatment for an illness.  They’ll even go up one side and then down the other of the mountain that is the amount of money all of us end up paying for all those folks who seek care for those catastrophic conditions in emergency rooms.

But when they arrive right back where they started, the GOP will come to a different conclusion.

They’ve already made up their mind.

The journey is mostly for show.

As Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee says in the article, "If there was a straight bill to repeal the health care law, I would vote for it because I think it's such a historic mistake. If that doesn't succeed, I think we'll go step by step. We can try to delay funding of some provisions and remove some of the taxes."

Oh, but ain’t that America for you and me…

This isn’t about revising some shit that probably needs to be revise but keeping the stuff that everyone likes.

Ain’t that America somethin’ to see baby…

This is about killing the whole idea of health care reform and offering nothing...because the GOP doesn't see the millions of Americans without coverage as a problem any more than they view health care as a right.

Ain’t that America home of the free…

And they want to take us right back where we started.

Little pink houses for you and me…

Blink.

***logs off humming Pink Houses by John Mellencamp***