Sunday "Disgusted With the GOP SOBs" Blog

Kurt Eichenwald is a reporter for the New York Times -- The "Doing Very Well and Not Losing Readership" New York Times.

Please, Please. Please. 

Read his heart-wrenching story (the last half of it is copied and pasted below) about trying to get and keep health insurance coverage for his pre-existing condition. And remember, he's not what we Americans would consider a "poor" person. 

Read his story and understand that the GOP are a group of malicious thugs not worthy of inclusion in the human race. Rattlesnakes have more humanity in their poisonous fangs than the human vipers who voted to increase human suffering and condemn innocent sick people to death so that an over-fed, narcissistic cretinous president could strut around in the Rose Garden and show his sycophantic cowards in the GOP House what a YUGE deal maker and preznit he is.

Read Eichenwald and understand that what Trump and the House Goopers did will harm more people than their scapegoats, the Muslims, could dream of hurting. And the horror of it is that the harm is being done to Americans by American elites -- y'know, the elites the Goopers thought Trump would save them from:



Kurt Eichenwald:


Last week, the House passed a bill that would push everyone with preexisting conditions back into the same situation. The representatives billowed and cooed that high-risk pools would protect us, fooling the same uneducated ones who didn’t know they paid for the uninsured. High risk pools had been tried before. They failed. But these members of congress probably didn’t even know that. They didn’t care enough to hold hearings to find out whether high-risk pools would work. They didn’t wait to find out how many people would lose their insurance. They had to rush it through. Then they cheered for themselves.

 Meanwhile, those of us with preexisting conditions were plunged back into fear. Foundations for people with chronic diseases began receiving phone calls from panicked people. My wife and I reviewed our options if this bill became law. We are middle aged now, which presented new issues. She is four years older than me. She hits retirement age in five years. If she retired and was on Medicare, I would be clinging to a slender thread to keep my insurance. I could never write another book. It would be too dangerous. My wife said she would work until she was almost 70 to keep me safe. Guilt overwhelmed me. She was born in Britain, and we discussed her citizenship and, if necessary, we could move there if I lost my coverage. We would have to burn through our savings for a long time, but eventually I might be able to get onto national health insurance. But I don’t want to leave America. I don’t want my wife to work until she’s almost 70. I don’t want to be guilty. And most important, I don’t want all the other people with preexisting conditions to be forced to make their life decisions based on where they can get group insurance. Or worse, to not be able to obtain group insurance, be denied private insurance and die.

I watched Fox News. They giggled and laughed that people were being hysterical about preexisting conditions. There were high-risk pools, they sneered, that states could participate in unless they didn’t want to. I watched the clip, over and over, of those self-congratulatory members of Congress, high-fiving and smiling, as I knew the situation at my house was playing out at millions of houses where talking points and rationalizations didn’t change the realities of what we would face. I commented about how terrible this was. And then I saw comments from people deriding those with preexisting conditions as wanting charity.

 I thought of members of Congress who wanted prisons as brutal as possible, until they themselves were jailed; then, they became advocates for prison reform. I thought of the ones who screamed about gays until their child came out, then they became tolerant. I thought about the members of Congress who happily sent other people’s children off to fight in Vietnam, while getting their own kids deferments and spots in the National Guard or reserves, making sure they wouldn’t see battle. And then I thought of the child whose parents home I visited, who told me of their boy dying of suffocation in his mother’s arms as they rushed to the hospital. They hadn’t been able to afford his inhaler that week. They had no insurance. They planned to buy it the week that followed. Their son died two days after they decided to take the risk.

 And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

 More people’s children would die. And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

People would be forced to take jobs they did not want or marry people they did not love.

And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived.

For millions, every day would be terrifying as they wondered if they would they run up bills that day that would bankrupt them or would they be unable to get treatment. Would they live through the week? 

And the members of Congress smiled and high-fived. 

 My anger exploded. I wanted them to feel the consequences of what they thought was so wonderful. Why should they be exempt from the damage they would inflict on others from their vote, votes they cast with so little concern about others that they didn’t hold hearings to find out what damage they might cause? 

 And so I tweeted, “As one with a preexisting condition, I hope every GOPr who voted for Trumpcare get a long-term condition, loses their insurance, and die.” 

 Harsh? You bet. I wanted the words to be blunt, to lay out the reality of what real people would face, people who didn’t have the ability of members of Congress to avoid the consequences they voted to inflict on real people. 

Conservatives broke out the fainting couches. I was wishing Republicans to die, they moaned. I forgot we live in an era where fools will interpret it the way they are told. One of the propagandists at the Daily Caller, after emailing me for comment at 3:00 in the morning, posted a story proclaiming I wanted my political opponents to die. And the conservative trolls descended, screaming for my death.  
I remain angry. I remember the tears of that woman whose son died in her arms. I remember my struggles. I remembered my fears. I remembered the fears of so many others I have spoken to over the years who struggled with preexisting conditions. I deleted the tweet. Apparently, confronting people with the reality of what they have chosen is just too inappropriate. 

Voting to let people die is fine, rubbing the fact that they voted to do that is just wrong. Do I regret what I said? No. I want those words to sink in. 

My tweet won’t kill anyone. 

But the vote from those members of Congress will. And if they are not forced to confront what they are doing, they will just keep smiling and high-fiving.