I love my friends. Even some of the more conservative ones.
I usually try to keep politics relatively light on my Facebook wall, but for some reason, I just couldn't stay quite this time around.
One of my friends (love love love her to death) posted this Trump quote on her wall.
Let me get this straight . . .
We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, Which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, forwhich we’ll be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese,
and financed by a country that’s broke!!!!!
I don't know why, but I had to comment.
To the squiggly!
:-( I didn't want to go through all of it... but...
We're putting everyone in a risk pool to bring down the cost of medical care. No one is being taxed on it unless you refuse to purchase health insurance (thus forcing the taxpayers to pay for your emergency medical care when you do need it).
Last I checked, the government does not "add" doctors. Not to mention, if it's an emergency, all 10mil of those people are already seeing doctors now in the ER. Now we're just covering them with health insurance so tax payers don't have to foot the bill for that ER visit.
The part about the 16000 new IRS agents is a complete and total fabrication and has no basis in fact. NONE.
It's an incredibly complex bill and that is why it is broken into several pieces and patched together by the committee and summarized for Congress. (Ever tried reading a bill? It can get tedious.) Nonetheless, if members of Congress didn't read it... well... that's still pretty crappy of them. But for the amount this bill covers, I can totally forgive someone for not reading the entire thing letter by letter.
Members of Congress are NOT exempt from the law and must maintain insurance coverage that meets the minimum standards of care described in the law.
Social Security and Medicare are NOT bankrupt. There are changes that need to be made (like there were in 1983), but SS will be able to pay out its obligations for the next forty years, at least. That's hardly "bankrupt".
As for Medicare, there was a FOOTNOTE in the CBO's Medicare Report that said "under current conditions" Medicare Part A would exhaust funds in the next decade. However, Parts B, C, and D are still fully funded and will be for quite some time. That footnote also was a straight projection of expenditures. It did NOT take into account economic or demographic changes that are a possibility over the same term. If you factor that in, the CBO report extends "solvency" for another decade. I won't say it's in GOOD shape, but it's far from broke.
As for the last statement about the country being broke... well... it's people like Trump that push through massive tax breaks for the wealthy under the absolutely ridiculous notion that that will incent them to create more jobs and generate more revenue. Sorry, but capitalists create jobs when there is a need for them. That need is generated with the lower/middle classes have more expendable cash and are consuming more goods and services. Wealthy people became wealthy because they know how to save money. Giving them more money to sock away does absolutely NOTHING for the economy...
As for the rest of it, it's all a bunch of name calling in personal attacks that I won't get into. (If you can't win an argument based on facts, resort to name calling.)
She justified posting it because it was supposed to be "funny".
If it's a joke/satire, yeah, it'd be funny, but unfortunately, people read that and believe the BS it contains. And that makes me sad. So again... :-(
Hopefully I reached one person because she deleted it. Or maybe she just wanted me to stop trolling her wall. lol
In any event, it's time to start pushing back on stuff like this. (One intermediate comment on that post and I went down a list of things that ACA does for people. A few people "liked" that comment.)
6:39 AM PT: Oh. Em. Gee. I went to bed after posting this because it was meant to just be a bit of a rant. I NEVER expect to be make the Rec List, much less the top of the list! Thanks to everyone that made this possible. My first time at the top of the list.