Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of Sen. Mike Lee that doesn't have Sen. Ted Cruz in the foreground?
I give up; Lee is the disillusioned-Denny's-manager-looking one on the right.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee has spent so much time in the shadow of ol' what's-his-face that we sometimes forget he is his own loon. Here he is complaining that the White House request to insurance companies that they allow consumers to enroll in 2014 plans even after the Dec. 23rd deadline is probably
just another step tah socialism.
"I think that’s a problem. I think it is definitely a step in the direction of what we all feared which is, national, single payer, government-run, government health care system, the likes of which can be seen in other countries around the world, many parts of Europe. We’re not well-suited for this sort of experiment in America. It is not going to work here. This is a step in that direction."
I will remind you here that Republicans quite recently
shut down the government to demand that parts or all of the Affordable Care Act be delayed, so (1) their outrage when some small part of the law actually
gets delayed continues to elevate the ol' eyebrows and (2) if not getting things done by the dates they are supposed to be done by is a clear path to government socialism, Mike Lee and the other Republican members of the Senate would be full-on Red Communists.
Hopefully, however, Senator Pipedream is right and all of this ridiculousness is (we can dream) only an elaborate ruse to distract us while the American government sets up a far simpler and more competent system for safeguarding its citizens heath needs in a manner not dependent on the future good behavior of the single most systemically malevolent industry existing in America today—perhaps some plan that some other nation, somewhere, has already successfully implemented? Ah, but that would suppose Sen. Lee was actually right about something, and I think none of us have high hopes in that department.
I do wonder about the constant assertions that what works in every other country would not work here in Freedomland, though: Why? Are we simply dumber than those other countries? More greedy? More incompetent? What is this new exceptionalism that says America could not possibly implement a government program that most other first-world nations now take for granted?