November 7, 2012

(Now That It Is Over) Why Citizens United Was a Lousy Idea (For the GOP)

Two years ago, I speculated that Citizens United---the Supreme Court ruling that gave wealthy corporations (foreign as well as domestic) the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence U.S. elections---was a conspiracy cooked up by Scalia and Bush officials. If you did not read it in 2010, here is a link.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9396106

Karl Rove was obviously part of the plan. Who announced the formation of the very first SuperPac----before the ink was even dry on the SCOTUS's opinions in the case? Turd Blossom, of course. Who held out his hand and told some of the nation's richest men "Give me hundreds of millions and I will make you billions (and quash that federal indictment while I am at it)"? Bush's Brain----

Except, Rove is not as brainy as all those billionaires seemed to believe. If he was, he would have realized what a bad idea Citizens United was for the party he claims to love.

What's not to like about legal steamer trunks full of cash (as opposed to Dick Nixon's secret suitcases full of cash)? Plenty, if you are a Republican. As a Democrat, I found the whole thing amusing---and very predictable. According to the rules laid down by Scalia, Super Pac money could be spent in only one way---on attack ads. You know, those negative TV commercials that drive everyone crazy in battle ground states. And what do Americans hate? Negativity. I thought Nancy Reagan taught the Republican Party that truth back in 1984. I guess Rove was not paying attention to those Morning in America ads. He was probably too busy rereading Pat Buchanan's dirty tricks memo from 1972---the one that sent all those people to jail.

Citizens United was the gift that kept giving---to the Democrats. All that rogue money meant that the party lost the power of the purse strings. Rather than rallying behind the candidate with the most money, Romney, they kept rallying behind whatever candidate was the latest recipient of SuperPac cash. And so, the party faithful fell in love with---and then discarded---Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum (!) before finally settling for whatever was left over, namely Mitt Willard Romney, less than affectionately known as Mittens by the Party base. By the time he finally won the nomination, he smelled like week old catfood----and was somewhere to the political right of David Dukes.

And it got better. In the past, candidates had to raise money from lots of folks, meaning that they had to have social skills. After Citizens United, a single wealthy donor could easily bankroll a congressional candidate. As a result, the Republicans were stuck with the kind of greasy little toadies that only a wealthy donor could love. And every time a greasy little toady---like Akins or Mourdouck-- put his foot in his mouth and said something asinine about rape, garnering shit loads of bad press for the party, the wealthy donor would come to the rescue with more steamer trunks full of legal cash....

The obscenely rich love their money more than anything else. I can only imagine what is going through the heads of guys like the Koch Brothers who have handed over millions of dollars for what turned out to be a massive crap shoot. What will they do in 2014 when Rove comes along with his hand out, asking for money again? Will they think to themselves "I should have given more?" and double their investment? Or will they realize that pouring money into SuperPacs is just like flushing it down the toilet?

I think they will double their investment. And I can't wait to see what kind of creepy candidates a handful of wealth megalomaniacs will pick for the GOP next time.

November 4, 2012

Live in North Texas, and I See NO Romney/Ryan Stickers or Signs

Anywhere. Even at the polling places, where there are tons of Republican signs, I have not seen a single Romney/Ryan sign. No Romney/Ryan signs in yards. No bumper stickers. If the Republicans in a redder than red state are ashamed of Romney, how can he expect them to turn out in huge numbers on election day to stand in line to vote for him?

I don't know what the press is smoking. Maybe weed wrapped in hundred dollar bills courtesy of Rove's SuperPac. No one likes Romney. He is an ass. The last candidate this unlikable was Dick Nixon, and we all saw how close the race was in 1968 with him running against a VP. How on earth does anyone think that Willard can unseat a popular president except through voter intimidation and election fraud?

Get out and vote and show the press that we do what we want to do, not what they tell us we ought to want to do.

November 1, 2012

Why Williard Won't Stop Lying

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed in the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Tom Paine, Common Sense

150,000,000 Google hits describe Romney's lies and 26,000,000 call him an outright liar. That makes him the most truth impaired candidate for president that we have seen since Tricky Dick ran on a campaign of ending the war in Vietnam---while secretly bribing Kissinger to sabotage LBJ's peace talks with North Vietnam. How does Romney sleep with himself at night? Easy. Romney thinks that he is a god-to-be, meaning that he is not running for president, he is running for Caesar or King, positions that are stepping stones on his road to divinity.

All Mormon males in good standing know that once they die, they will become gods with their own planets full of devoted worshipers. And Romney, with his enormous piles of trash is obviously a very, very good Mormon, since the God of the puritans shows His favor by granting material wealth in this world and then spiritual wealth in the next. That makes Romney a demi-god, at the very least. He is running for president in order to increase the number of worshipers he will have in his next life. If the law denies him a harem of wives to wait upon him after death, he will accept a bunch of serfs instead.

Having God as a president should be a good (Godly) thing, right? Depends upon what you think the president's job is. If the Commander-in-Chief exists in order to increase His own glory and reward His faithful and punish His enemies, then Romney is the man for the job. If the president is supposed to serve the people, then maybe Mittens is not such a good choice.

Take Romney's position on FEMA and natural disasters. Of course he would be against federal assistance for storm ravaged states. A storm is an act of God. Helping people who have been punished by God is a sin. If God-President Romney decides to punish you for being an unmarried pregnant woman or a gay male or Black, you had better keep your mouth shut and enjoy it----the way that some Republicans want women to enjoy rape. Indeed, as a god in the making, if Romney screws you over, it won't be figurative rape---it will be what Zeus did to Leda. And Danae. And Io.

The Roman Caesars got away with anything---murder, incest---because they knew that upon their deaths they would become gods, and gods are always right----even retroactively. So, when Romney lies, he does so secure in the knowledge that the truth is what he (God) says it is---and therefore, it is fact checkers like Candy Crowley who are going to Hell.

Now, I would like to suggest a common sense exercise for anyone thinking "Ah, Romney can't be so bad. He was governor of Massachusetts." Think back to the last president who believed that he was the anointed successor. The one who lied and cheated his way into office twice. The one who used his power to enrich his friends and persecute everyone else. The one whose Department of Justice waged war on Black Folks. The one who used the military as mercenaries for the oil industry. The one who used the Constitution as toilet paper, because he answered to a higher law---his own. While Romney may not seem exactly like W. at first glance---he is a bit smarter and a hell of a lot more disagreeable---they are cut from the same cloth. The only difference between Willard and W. is the friends that will be rewarded and the enemies who will be squashed like bugs. So, unless you are Mormon or a hedge fund managers or a banker, you really ought to get out there vote for Obama, the man who looks after his enemies as well as his friends because he knows he was elected to serve them all.

November 1, 2012

So, Can Someone Point Me to the Bible Passage That Says God Lives on Planet Kolob….

…..and loves polytheism? Now that Billy Graham has taken down the “Mormonism is a cult” page from his website and Mike Huckabee has told us that we will burn in the fires of Hell if we vote for Obama, I have to assume that Biblical scholars have unearthed some new information. Like a revised Ten Commandments that starts off

“I am the Lord Thy God and I have an infinite number of subGods, and you will bow down to your personal subGod, who will in turn bow down to His subGod and so on until someone finally bows down to Me.”

Because according to Mormons every Mormon male who dies becomes a God with his---sorry, His own planet and His own chosen people, making Mormonism a polytheistic religion much like Hinduism or Voodoo. And I am sure that Mike Huckabee and Billy Graham and all the other Fundamentalists would not make such claims unless they had the Scripture to back them up. Not about something like there being more than one God. I mean, dude! That is the most basic tenet of monotheism, which is what I was always taught Christianity is.

Also, God Prime (aka Elohim) is not from the planet Earth. He is from Kolob. And God did not make us. Some subGod did. The same way that all the subGods to be (like Mitt Romney) are making Their people to populate Their own planets. That's "Their" with a capitol T, because there is more than one of Them. And They don't come from Earth. They come from Kolob. Which I can't find referenced in the Bible. Maybe Rev. Graham or Huckabee can point out that passage for us, just so we are clear about why we are going to Hell is we don't vote for Mittens? I want to make sure Huckabee and Graham did not pick up a copy of a science fiction novel instead a Bible, when they came to their decision. Because I don't think we get do-overs when it comes to Hell.

October 29, 2012

You Voted for Romney/Ryan in 2012…Now Welcome to Your First Day of Voucher-care!

You voted for Romney/Ryan in 2012, because you had a vague sense that these two men had more in common with you than then President Obama. Nothing you could put your finger on. There was just something you liked about Romney’s face----

You were 55 when you voted for Romney. You lost your job in banking in 2008, when the economy went Boom under Bush, and it took you four years to find another, halfway decent job, one with benefits. In 2013, you were just starting to pull yourself out of a financial hole when Romney, the president of your choice was sworn in.

You noticed the change right away. The federal government under Romney stopped enforcing key provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Your 22 year old daughter was dropped from your health insurance----while pregnant with her first child. Then, in 2014, your employer stopped offering health insurance. You were given the option of paying out of your own pocket for continued coverage, but there was no way you could pay over a thousand dollars a month plus pay off your debts. Ironically, 2014 was the year you would have been able to purchase your own individual insurance at a reasonable rate, had the federal government not repealed Obama-care. Looking back, you wondered what you were thinking in 2012. Romney’s face did not look so agreeable when you saw him on television, now.

Since you couldn’t afford insurance, you went without. You were worried, but you reminded yourself that you had done it before, between 2008 and 2012 and nothing bad happened….

Three years without health care. In 2017, that pesky “indigestion” you were having for over a year turned out to be a heart attack. A major heart attack. By the time the doctors at the charity hospital released you to return to work, your job was gone. Your employer had hired someone younger. You consulted an attorney but were told that the Super Pac approved judges whom Romney had appointed overwhelming sided with employers in age discrimination lawsuits. So, you found a job at a convenience store and tried to stay afloat while you filed for Social Security disability---

Five years later, you still had not qualified. Social Security said that you were too highly educated. You could work from home, from bed if necessary. Too bad no employer was hiring a 60 something with a bad heart who had to work from bed. Too bad you could no longer retire early.

In 2022, you finally reached the age of 65. That was when you got the bad news. Your Social Security retirement savings---they were gone. Long gone, into some billionaire's Swiss bank account. Romney rewarded his hedge fund manager and banker donors by “privatizing” Social Security---and then, your retirement savings were invested in a bunch of worthless mortgages.

And your Medicare, the insurance that was supposed to take care of you in your retirement years? Gone. Long gone. Instead, the government issued you a voucher. If you could have cashed it in and used the money to pay for food or rent you would have. But the voucher could only be used to buy health insurance. So, you started asking around. And you discovered that because of your age and your heart condition, your voucher would only buy you a high deductible----$5000---policy that only covered your hospital expenses, no outpatient, medication or preventive service coverage at all. The hospital industry was happy. When you finally showed up in an emergency room dying, their bill would be covered. But your Voucher-care was not going to do anything to keep you healthy in the meantime.

Welcome to the first day of you Voucher-care!

October 29, 2012

Daisy at 50

Forty-eight years ago, 2 year old Monique Corzilius aka Daisy was featured in an ad reminding us that life is too precious to waste. Monique Corzilius is now 50 years old. If Romney/Ryan win this election, she will never get Medicare. Instead, when she reaches 65 she will be given a voucher and told to purchase insurance from an industry which refuses to insure the elderly and sick. "Daisy" is in just as much danger now as she was in 1964. Unless Americans read the small print, they may go to the polls convinced that Romney is the same as Obama---except white----not realizing that he, his VP and his party have vowed to eliminate the Medicare program that LBJ built to keep the nation's elderly from sinking into poverty due illness and aging.

If "Daisy" was worth saving in 1964, she is worth saving now.



Watch the original ad here:

"These are the stakes. We must either love each other, or we must die" LBJ

October 28, 2012

Once Medicare is Gone, We Will Never Get It Back

Romney/Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare. They promise to give old folks and the disabled “vouchers” that they can use to buy private insurance---the kind that individual Americans have to buy if their employer does not offer coverage. The kind of insurance that costs more and pays out less the older and sicker you are. The kind of insurance that has lifetime caps and huge copayments and deductibles and limited choices.

How will senior America do under Voucher-care? Since I am a family physician at a public health clinic that cares for lots of chronically ill middle aged folks who have lost their jobs---and insurance---I know exactly the way things will turn out for older Americans. I can tell you their stories in advance.

There is Hazel, 72, who has congestive heart failure. Her grown kids are struggling to get by, and so they live with her, and her daughter-in-law takes care of her. Heart failure is a very expensive condition to treat. Hazel is on and out of the hospital, takes twenty pills a day----and she has just met her lifetime cap. She is out of insurance. She has a choice now. Give up her home---which is paid for----in order to buy herself six more months of life. Or go on hospice and die, so that her family has a house after she is gone. Her mind is still sharp. She knows what it feels like to smother, the blind terror that grips her when she tries to breathe through fluid filled lungs. The hospice nurses promise that she will not suffer. They will give her plenty of morphine—which will hasten her death. As she is sitting at home one night, debating what she will do, she goes online and reads the comments written in the New York Times about another American who died because he lost his health insurance. One comment in particular catches her eye. The author says that if people had to pay out of their own pockets for end of life care, they would realize that it is better to just die. She wonders how old the author of that comment is and if he ever watched a parent die from a treatable condition and how he would feel if his lungs suddenly filled up with fluid and the only way he could breathe again was to go to a hospital he could not afford. She remembers how different it was for her mother, who had complications of diabetes. Medicare had no lifetime limits. Up until the day she died at 80 from a stroke, Hazel’s mother remained clear headed and bright. She volunteered at her Church. She told stories to her grandkids. Hazel always imagined that her old age would be the same. She never thought that when she gave up her Medicare, she was giving up her right to have an old age. If she could go back and undo the 2012 election, she would. But she can’t. There is no time machine. You have to get it right the first time. And she and lot of other Americans got it so terribly wrong.

Bill, 65 is newly retired---and, for the first time in his life, he is uninsured. He got his Voucher in the mail, but he was unable to find any insurer who would enroll him, because he has prostate cancer, and under Romney/Ryan insurers can reject those with pre-existing conditions. The company for which he worked declared “bankruptcy” and was able to get out from under its pension and health insurance obligations for retirees while still flush with cash. Bill never expected to have to fall back on his Medicare, but he counted upon it being there, just in case. He didn’t realize that Voucher-care covers only healthy seniors. He has some money saved and a big life insurance policy. That, combined with his Social Security makes Bill too “wealthy” for public healthcare. If he pays his own medical bills, he will run through his savings in about three years----and, with treatment, the cancer will take five or more years to kill him. Or, he can refuse treatment and die in just under a year and leave something for his wife and kids. Bill thinks a lot about that 2012 election, too. Back then, he considered himself one of the fortunate ones. He would never be dependent upon the government. He had lived an exemplary life, working hard, saving his money, planning for the future---but sometimes the future we get is not the one we expect. He realizes now that his vote in 2012 was a crap shoot---and he lost everything in one roll.

Wanda, 72 fell and broke her hip. Her Voucher-care covers her hospital costs, but it does not cover rehabilitation or home health care, things that Medicare used to cover. Her private insurance is designed for healthy young working people, not frail seniors. She is shipped home before she is able to take care of herself. She has no children and no nearby relatives. She is unable to cook food for herself or clean up after herself. She lives off cold, canned soup, growing progressively weaker. Since she can no longer drive, she misses doctors’ appointments. Her health deteriorates, but her mind is still sharp. She knows she cannot go on like this. She decides to do something she vowed never to do---go into a nursing home. But under Romney/Ryan, Medicaid has been cut back, and there is a long wait for nursing home beds in her state. So, she is forced to hire domestic help---a stranger who offers her services for a modest sum that even an old woman on a fixed income can afford. Wanda does not realize that her new companion preys off elderly people who are too weak to care for themselves at home but who have nowhere else to go. Her bank account is cleared out. Her possessions are stolen and sold. When she has nothing left worth stealing, she is abandoned----and there still is no nursing home bed for her. And the hospital where she ends up malnourished and dehydrated is being pressured by her Voucher-care to get her out of there or else they will stop paying her bills. As the woman from hospital collections asks her for the tenth time how she plans to pay for her portion of the hospital bill, Wanda looks back on the 2012 election. She clearly remembers being told by Romney not to worry---she would be taken care of. She wonders what the lady from the hospital collections department would say if she told her “Go ask Romney for the money. He’ll pay my bill.”

Every now and then, we find ourselves at a crossroads, faced with a decision that will change the world and our lives irrevocably. We are at such a crossroads now. If we vote for Romney/Ryan, we vote to end Medicare. We vote for a world in which only healthy, wealthy or working seniors will have value, and everyone else will be “expendable”. Does that sound like the kind of America you want to grow old in? Does that sound like the kind of America you want your parents and kids to grow old in? You have to decide now. Because once Medicare is gone, we will never get it back.

The private insurance industry hates Medicare. Insurance CEOs, with their corporate jets and seven figure salaries know how easy it would be to expand Medicare to cover all Americans. And so, they are willing to sacrifice our most vulnerable citizens in order to ensure their own profits. That is why you can trust Romney/Ryan to keep their promise to end Medicare. Not because they hate seniors. No, they will end Medicare, because their Super Pac donors have bribed them to do it.

October 28, 2012

John Sununu’s White Trash Moment

First, I want to clarify something. There is no such thing as White Trash (noun)---poor or otherwise---just as there is no such thing as Evil Incarnate, the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. Folks are folks. They can be nice one moment and shitty the next. They love some people and hate some others. They have positive qualities and negative qualities----and, depending upon their circumstances, their negative qualities can become virtues and their positive ones can become liabilities.

However, there is such a thing as white trash (verb), as in to blame one’s loss on someone else’s race or ethnicity. Recently, we witnessed former New Hampshire governor and current Romney pit bull, John Sununu demonstrate how white trashing is done.

http://newyork.newsday.com/news/nation/john-sununu-s-colin-powell-remark-latest-in-controversial-career-1.4159499

Poor John Sununu. When he uttered those infamous words, he probably didn’t even realize that he was white trashing. In his mind, he was thinking “Colin Powell is a Republican. Romney deserves the support of all Republicans. If Powell endorses Obama, then Romney has been robbed! How did this happen? It was all the Black man’s fault! Those Black folks hate us white folks! They can never resist an opportunity to do us harm!”

White trashing is not as rare in this country as some would like to believe. Every time a New Yorker complains about how many Asian kids are getting into the city’s prestigious specialty high schools, he or she is committing white trash. Every time a worker complains that he cannot get a job, because some “Mexican” will work harder, longer and for a lower salary, he is contributing to the white trashification of our society. When you hear a woman complain that her Social Security check is too low, because all the _____s are getting too much welfare, you have just witnessed white trashing at its worst---

Or best, depending upon your point of view. Because all things are relative. If you are a business owner looking for cheap labor, your best investment is divide and conquer. And the slickest move rich folks in the United States have ever pulled is to convince so many working class whites that they are poor, homeless, uninsured because of some equally poor, homeless, uninsured Black, Brown, Yellow or Red person conspired to make them that way.

John Sununu---and the candidate he supports, Mitt Romney---want you, their fellow white Americans to believe that you lost your house because some Black couple got a mortgage they did not deserve---not because you voted for Bush, the village idiot from Texas, who seemed like someone you could sit down and have a beer with, and then he turned around and let the banks commit grand larceny. No, no, it isn’t any white man’s fault that Bush did what he did. It isn’t even Bush’s fault that he did what he did. As John McCain just said, in a white trash moment of his own, it was Colin Powell’s fault we are up to our eyeballs in debt.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/john-mccain-colin-powell_n_2024574.html

That’s right John! You tell them. Meanwhile, I will go check your Senate record to confirm that you voted against the war----

Oops! Sen. John McCain voted for the war. But that can’t be right! A Black man got us into that war! McCain told us so!

We all make mistakes. We all miss opportunities or flunk entrance exams or make foolish investments. If we are Mitt Romney, we repeatedly do and say stupid things that get us into political hot water---like calling a press conference in the middle of a national security crisis in a pathetic attempt to score political points that ends up costing us the endorsement of a former Secretary of State. None of us---not even millionaire Mormons---measures up to our dream.

Fortunately, most of us are grown ups. We own up to our mistakes. We learn from our failures and try to do better next time.

But there will always be some Americans who try to soothe their bruised egos by declaring “It’s not my fault! It’s all the fault of that god damned____!” And for a moment, those Americans will feel a whole lot better about themselves---until they realize that projecting all that anger on someone else is about as useful as a roller skates for a fish. It doesn't get them jobs. It doesn't get them a house or health insurance. It just keeps them distracted, so the banksters can do what they do best---rob them blind and then declare "It wasn't us! It was the _____s!"

October 27, 2012

I Refuse to Believe that the Majority of Americans Want to Do Away With Medicare

However, the press keeps telling me that Romney is way ahead on the popular vote and closing the gap on the electoral vote.

Since I do not know a single person who wants to abolish Medicare, I must assume either

1) the pollsters are full of it, or

2) people do not know that Romney/Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare.

Now, if the pollsters are lying, this means that Team Romney plans to use its connections within the E-voting industry to hack the vote. Because the only way that lying helps Romney is if it makes a steal seem more plausible. In which case, we need to insist upon paper ballots in all battleground states.

If the second possibility is true, then what the hell are our nation’s reporters doing? The number one issue that defines the two candidates is Medicare. Not rape. Not race. Not which celebrities support which candidate. Every voter who has ever heard the name Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan should know that these two plan to dismantle the healthcare program on which our seniors and disabled depend for their lives. Every American who plans to vote for this pair should know that he or she is casting a vote to strip Grandma of her healthcare. The only people willing to vote for them should be the type who believe in ice floes for those who cannot pull their own weight.

So, which is it America? Do you begrudge your father his blood pressure medication? Are you looking forward to dying young and making a good looking corpse? Do you even know the policies of the men for whom you are voting?

And members of the press, when you shove that microphone in Mitt Romney's face, why is it only to ask his opinion of rape? Of course he is against rape. Why don't you ask him what he thinks about the Paul Ryan plan for Medicare? Do the nation's reporters plan to never grow old? Are they willing to kiss their parents and grandparents good bye?

Those who care about the health of our most vulnerable citizens have an obligation to speak out. Let the rest of the country know what is being planned. Make sure that no one goes to the polls early or on election day without understanding the stakes. Because once they abolish Medicare it will be too late. We will never get it---or Grandma-- back.

October 25, 2012

Romney/Ryan Are Tearing a Hole in the Safety Net That Keeps Infants, Mothers and the Elderly Alive

If you believe the lies that Romney has told, he will make sure that everyone has health insurance for their pre-existing conditions without having to pay for it. He has assured us that the nation’s emergency rooms can keep us all alive and healthy----never talking about the cost. His surrogates promise that no woman, no matter how bad her health, will die while pregnant under their watch, even if she cannot get a medical necessity abortion. He tells us that too much is being spent to pay for health care for the poor, for seniors, for mothers and their children. These vulnerable groups can get by on a lot less---and they will have to, if Romney/Ryan get elected.

I. Mothers

The safety net for the nation’s poor mothers is Medicaid. Romney/Ryan want to change Medicaid into a block grant program. Meaning that if the governor and legislature of your state is in the pocket of the nursing home industry and nursing homes want to collect more money from Medicaid, you may find that prenatal care is now under-covered---or, not covered at all. This will be especially hard on young, unwed mothers living in states which choose not to spend Medicaid for birth control, too. The number of high risk pregnancies will rise, while access to obstetric care will drop.

Imagine that Terry, your 16 year old daughter is pregnant with her first child. Unable to afford on obstetrician, she stays at home, takes prenatal vitamins and keeps her fingers crossed. Your great grandmother delivered all her babies at home. What’s the worst that can happen? Since Terry cannot afford a doctor, she does not know that her blood pressure is rising. Her first clue that she has eclampsia is when she has a seizure. She bleeds into her brain and dies on the operating room table as they try to save the life of her premature baby. The infant’s Neonatal ICU stay will cost half a million dollars, but Medicaid will cover that, because hospitals have powerful lobbies, too. That’s half a million dollars that could have paid for prenatal care for several hundred young women like your daughter, Terry.

If Medicaid is turned into a block grant program, it will be very easy for state officials to ignore actual medical need and use the funds the way they already use highway funds---to reimburse their donors. And since Romney/Ryan plan to reduce the amount of money the federal government gives to states for Medicaid, the fight for those dollars will intensify over time, and those without the money to hire lobbyists---like young mothers---will be left out in the cold.

Mothers with preexisting medical conditions will be in an even worse bind. With Roe v. Wade overturned, there will be nothing to stop your state from outlawing abortion, even to save the life of the mother. If they want, they can pass a law making it illegal to go to another state to abort that “unborn citizen.” So, if your uninsured, married sister Kelly, who has been managing her own diabetes with over the counter insulin has a broken condom and gets pregnant, she will have few choices. Unable to afford high risk obstetric care, she will almost certainly run into severe complications during her pregnancy that could kill her and her unborn child. While she would love to have a second child, she knows that it is impossible for her in her present financial situation. So, she decides to have an abortion. Since abortion is illegal in her state, she gets what used to be called a back alley abortion. If she dies, her other child will be orphaned. If she survives but has complications and has to go to the hospital for treatment, she will face jail time for murder.

2. Children

Over the past decade, this country has made tremendous strides in providing health care for our most vulnerable citizens---children, who through no fault of their own, are uninsured. Republicans had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table when programs like SCHIP were created, but now it is hard to imagine a world in which any politician would say of a child “He does not deserve health care.”

Unfortunately, Romney/Ryan do not give people what they deserve. They do what is politically advantageous for them. And Romney/Ryan see an advantage in eliminating SCHIP, the most democratic health care program in the country, designed to give all children an equal start in life. Why? Presumably because they and their elite backers like having their own kids start off with the advantage of good health while other children suffer the lifelong effects of preventable childhood illness. Romney/Ryan want to eliminate food stamps, too. Why? Presumably because they and their elite backers like having their own kids start off life well fed while other children go hungry.

Imagine a world in which you cannot afford to see a doctor to get your eight year old son, Tommy a prescription for an asthma inhaler. Every two months or so, you have to take him to the emergency room for rescue treatment. Once or twice a year, he is admitted for up to a week. Each time, you are given a prescription for one inhaler and told to see a doctor. But the doctor demands cash up front that you do not have. Meanwhile, debt collectors are all over you trying to recoup the thousands of dollars that you owe the local hospital. And Tommy is going to fail third grade, because he has missed so much school due to all those asthma attacks---attacks that could have been prevented if there was some place you could take him for regular care. After ten years of this, one of two things can happen. Your son, Tommy can die on the way to the emergency room. Or he can survive to become an adult and outgrow his asthma---and suddenly, he finds that he has no skills, no education, and he is stuck in a low wage, dead end job for the rest of his life, which is a real shame, because he was a bright kid. Some employer—a Romney donor, no doubt, is going to be lucky to get a bright, hard-working young man like your Tommy to slave for him for minimum wage.

Terry’s daughter Emily, the baby who was born two months premature because her mother could not afford prenatal care has made it out of the Neonatal ICU. Emily’s grandparents take her home. Having learned their lesson watching their daughter die, they vow to do everything possible to keep their granddaughter healthy. However, with their states Medicaid program increasingly strapped for cash, it has created a form of Voucher-care for children. There are plenty of private insurers lining up to accept vouchers for healthy babies, but none of them want to cover a special needs child like Emily, with her heart, lung and eye disease. Emily’s grandparents ask the state for help. They are told that they make too much money. But, if they cancel their plans to adopt the baby and instead give her up for foster care, the state will cover Emily’s medical bills. No state is callous enough to let an orphan die from lack of health care.

3. Elderly

The nation’s seniors are going to be hit hard when Romney/Ryan tear a hole in the safety net, because with age comes sickness. Right now, if you can make it to 65 without dying of a treatable disease like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, you have a fighting chance. That means folks whose jobs have been outsourced to China and who no longer have insurance still have hope. Romney and Ryan are determined to crush that hope. They will do this in the sneakiest way possible, by underinsuring the nation’s elderly.

Young folks know all about being underinsured. Most elderly folks don’t. But they will learn. For William, it will mean that the private insurance plan which he purchases with his voucher has a “no preexisting conditions” clause. Shortly after turning 65, he will go to the hospital with chest pain. It will turn out to be a minor heart attack. Unfortunately, last year, he saw a doctor for something unrelated and mentioned that he occasionally has chest pain. When his private insurer discovers this, they will refuse to pay for his hospitalization. He will find himself owing tens of thousands of dollars to the hospital. Worse, he will have no way to pay for the medication which was prescribed. When the chest pain comes back, he will have a choice. Go back to the hospital and get stuck with another bill he cannot pay---or stay at home to tough it out. This is a choice that Americans under the age of 65 make every day. Under Romney/Ryan our seniors will have make those kinds of tough decisions, too.

Sarah, who just turned 65 and who has used her voucher to buy the cheapest insurance she could find, will face tough choices, too. Because she has high blood pressure, she is “high risk”, so she could only afford a plan that had a sky high deductible. She will have to pay $2000 out of her own pocket for health care, before her insurer will kick in anything. She notices a lump in her breast. There is a Women’s Health Fair, and she is able to get a free mammogram. The mammogram comes back normal, but the tech tells her that a lump still needs to be checked---cancer sometimes does not show up on a mammogram. Sarah calls around. It will cost several hundred dollars up front to see a surgeon and several thousand more just to get a biopsy. Unfortunately, she is living on a fixed income---her Social Security----and she cannot come up with the cash. So, she does what many Americans in their 30’s-50’s do---she crosses her fingers and hopes that the lump will go away. It doesn’t. It grows. It eats through the skin. By the time he family convinces her to see a doctor, her cancer has spread to her bones.

Brad, 72, suffered kidney failure shortly after he signed up for his “Voucher-care.” Since it was not a preexisting condition, they had to cover it. He went on dialysis. His insurance plan only covers a dialysis center forty-five miles away from his home, so his wife had to quit work to take him back and forth for his treatments which he gets three times a week. The deductibles and copayments for his medications, tests and doctor visits have used up their savings, and they had to mortgage their home to pay for his continued care. When they defaulted on the mortgage, they had to give up their house. Luckily, his grown son lives nearby, so they were able to move in with him. Brad hoped to get a transplant, but no matching donor could be found. So, he continues his dialysis. Except for his kidneys, he is in good shape. He enjoys playing with his grandchildren, and he loves his wife, who has given up so much to take care of him. When he imagined his golden years, he did not expect to be on dialysis, but life could be worse---

And then, Brad gets a call. He is about to use up the lifetime limit on his Voucher-care. His insurer will no longer pay for his dialysis. When he signed up for Voucher-care, he was told that Medicare would be there for him if he ever needed it. But Medicare has gone bankrupt, because too little money was going in and too much was being paid out for the handful of extremely old, frail and sick seniors who continued to rely upon it for their care while everyone else was steered towards private plans. Brad is out of time and out of options.

Brad dies when he can no longer afford his dialysis treatments. His wife, June is devastated. She suffers a stroke and can no longer talk, walk or feed herself. Doctors say that she will never get better. Reluctantly, her kids decide to put her in a nursing home. But, her Voucher-care does not cover nursing home care. Since she is now destitute after years of paying Brad’s medical bills, her family hopes that Medicaid can help. Medicaid in their state used to cover nursing homes pretty well. However, that was before the federal government slashed their contribution, and people got progressively older and sicker. June’s family discovers that there is now a waiting list for Medicaid nursing home beds. So, they take her home. She develops a bedsore, because the family does not really know how to take care of someone as sick as her. Adult protective services steps in and declares that she must be put in a nursing home. Since there are no Medicaid nursing home beds available, and since her insurance does not cover such care, her adult children will have to pay $75,000 a year out of their own pockets. The kids are devastated. They don’t have that kind of money. Surely, the state can’t force them to provide custodial care to an adult parent! They consult an attorney and discover that their state is one of many that requires adult children to pay the bills of their parents. As long as the elderly had Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to help them out, no one tried to enforce that law. But now, faced with the prospect of watching seniors die in the streets, the state has no other option. June’s kids have to cut back on nonessentials---including their health care premiums. And so the cycle of sickness and poverty continues….

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3483

http://www.firstfocus.net/news/press_release/ryan-budget-cuts-chip-and-medicaid-risks-the-health-of-america’s-children

http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/elections-politics/womens-health-budget-1154.htm