The American people are in favor of the Public Option. They support long overdue reforms of the healthcare system to increase competition, implement much needed regulation, increase system efficiency and to reduce costs. They are looking for politicians who are not bribed by and beholden to the Insurance companies. The public is watching and waiting for reform, and was patiently supportive for a year. That is, until the excise tax on healthcare plans was proposed. After that, the union base support was lost, middle class and independent support was lost, and a Massachusetts Senate seat was lost. And the losses will continue until you understand why it is a fundamentally wrong action.
It’s overly simplistic to say that the excise tax was the last straw. When meaningful reform was tossed aside by the bribed Senate, and their need to do something led to a proposed tax on existing benefits, the public naturally cried foul. But why did support collapse among the base and independents simultaneously? Because the effects of the excise tax are fundamentally opposed to the stated goal of healthcare reform. And the public knows it.
Healthcare reform is championed as providing a fundamental human right, the Right to Life. This right has a strong basis in the foundations of this nation and thus strong public support. The public supports healthcare for all. But then the narrative changed, from the ‘out of reach’ healthcare for all, to healthcare for some. Comments began appearing in the threads as Well, you’ve got yours, You don’t care about anyone else and Some people have too much healthcare. And these sentiments were used to justify granting human rights to one group by taking them away from another.
That is an impossible position for the government to hold. You cannot give a fundamental right to one person by taking it away from another. If healthcare is a fundamental right, then why is the reform proposal to take it away from those who have worked hard to obtain it? Why should the public support this? To argue fairness is an insult. Giving care to a sick child by taking it away from yours isn’t fairness, it’s suicide.
The middle class, being squeezed from all sides, saw corrupt politicians reject all real actionable reform to instead squeeze them further by rationing their healthcare, by forcing them into cheaper, inferior insurance plans, by taxing their fundamental human right. That’s the change they voted for? Junk insurance for all? To be told that their reward for getting an education, getting up going to work everyday and sacrificing salary for good benefits, is a reduction of those benefits and more cost? That’s not reform, it’s the basis for class warfare.
You cannot say that a citizen has too much of a fundamental right. And you cannot give rights by taking them away. The healthcare excise tax takes a right from one group to give to another. That is why it failed politically and morally.