I read with great interest last week U.S. Representative Luke Messer’s letter to the Editor calling on us to abandon President Obama’s policies. I also watched as he and his cohorts in the House have pushed this great nation to the brink of a government shutdown. Messer cites the same history lessons that we should have learned from the Great Depression, yet he prescribes the same Republican solution that bankrupted America once before and maybe will again. Step aside and do nothing.
Inequality is worse than ever, with the 400 richest Americans worth more than about half of all people in the country. Everyone, even the wealthy, should be alarmed by this growing income gap.Sure, the President has proposed raising taxes and increasing spending but these proposals have not been passed. The Republicans took control of the House in 2010 and we are still effectively operating under the same tax structure that was in effect under President Bush. The last major efforts by Congress were in 2009 when it passed the stimulus — which increased employment by as many as 3.3 million full-time jobs, and the Affordable Care Act which you attack as ObamaCare. Yes, the income gap has grown in this Country but this is not due to this President’s policies. What jobs bills have you proposed and passed this year?
Messer says that ObamaCare isn’t working yet health care exchanges don’t even open until this week and coverage doesn't start until January 2014. He says that insurance rates will raise 72 percent in Indiana under the Act but In Indiana, insurance plans in the coming federal health insurance exchange are expected to run from just under $100 per month for some single adults to close to $1,000 for family of four. The Indiana Department of Insurance didn’t really release “data” in the plural — it released a single data point. The $570 per month figure is the average of all of the submitted rates, including cheaper plans with less benefits (so-called “Bronze” and “Silver” level plans) as well as the more generous and expensive “Gold” and “Platinum” level plans. That’s like saying the average cost of a car in an Indiana dealership is $100,000 because it sells $20,000 Fords, $60,000 BMWs, and $220,000 Lamborghinis — technically true, but highly misleading. You need to check your sources Congressman. Fox News talking points are not credible sources.
Lastly, the Representative says that the system needs reforms. Great. What specific ideas are he or his Republican majority putting forth to address these issues? The last great proposal on health care was from the conservative Heritage Foundation where everyone was supposed to take on their own personal responsibility and buy health insurance. President George H.W. Bush supported the individual mandate and even before this, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supported various universal health care mandates. Oh yeah, President Obama adopted that idea and now you hate it.