The Gang of Thirteen (listed below)— are the Republican Senators chosen by their leadership to compile the Senate version of Zombie Trumpcare, their bill to ‘Repeal and Replace’ the ACA. Much like the mythical ‘death panels’ that critics of the ACA so ominously and falsely warned us about back in 2009 — This group constitutes a ‘Death Panel,’ since their bill will decide who continues to get real affordable health insurance and who doesn’t.
Back in 2009, Senator Chuck Grassley told a crowd back home in Iowa that, "We should not have a government program that determines you're gonna pull the plug on Grandma." Well, when you take people’s insurance coverage away or make it unaffordable — it’s the same thing. In 2009, the ‘death panel’ notion was Sarah Palin’s ‘one hit wonder’ and became a rallying cry against the ACA. Of course those ‘death panels’ were nonsense, pure propaganda used to gin up fear and opposition to the ACA. Well not this time. this Senate death panel is all too real.
In addition to giving an 800 million dollar tax break to their rich friends and campaign contributors, by crafting the bill that repeals the ACA, these 13 Republican senators get to decide how many million US citizens loose affordable health insurance and effective Medicaid — and as a consequence — they will determine how many live longer or die sooner. Listen and watch what happens, because I seriously doubt we’ll hear from anyone who objected to the ACA in 2009 on the phony grounds of Obama ‘death panels,’ now that the Republican’s in the Senate have convened an actual ‘Death Panel.’ We won’t hear a peep, not a single one.
Meet the new Senate Death Panel, it’s a murder’s row —
Members of Senate leadership
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming
Committee chairmen
HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee
Budget Chairman Mike Enzi of Wyoming
Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah
Conservatives
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas
Moderate-leaning
Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado
Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio
Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania
Would you trust these guys with your life?
Some Trump voters might be reassured or perhaps even fooled by the hollow and nonsensical rhetoric of guys like Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) — who argue that it’s all going to be fine, because after all:
‘Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare’
But, if you’re not brain dead (like Rep. Labrador appears to be), it isn’t difficult to understand how people die because they can’t access affordable medical treatment — or because the treatment we can afford is substandard and ineffective, or because the local hospital closed and we couldn’t reach the regional facility in time — or because we sometimes take our chances and decide not to seek treatment, fearing that being bankrupted by the treatment is worse than the risk of dying.
If the Senate Death Panel goes forward with a House-like version of ACA Repeal and Replace, the -R after these senator’s names will no longer stand for Republican — it will be a new shorthand for Reaper — If these 13 guys (and please note that the R leadership has chosen an all male cast for the death panel) succeed in pushing a repeal/replace bill similar to the House version through the Senate —one in which the elderly and sick are condemned to unaffordable and unsustainable high risk insurance pools and states are allowed waivers so they no longer have to cover preexisting conditions, then they will all be stone cold killers and will have earned the death panel moniker. If a substandard repeal and replacement bill ever passes, each of these 13 senators should be tarred and tattooed with shame for for all eternity for their loathsome participation on this death panel.
Senators Cruz, Hatch, and Dr. Barrasso are up for reelection in 2018 — they can be forced to publicly defend their murderous decisions sooner than the rest of the panel and voters in Texas Utah and Wyoming will have an opportunity to respond at the ballot box by voting them out of office.
Efforts by Senate Republicans to repeal and replace the ACA will not end well if we sit back, watch and wait for the death panel to rewrite the law. These 13 Senators need to know that we’re all mad as hell about the House version — the one that Maureen Dowd today compared to dogfood
www.nytimes.com/... and that we’re never going to accept anything remotely like it from the Senate. Never.
After 100+ days of nonsense, chaos and disruption, if you are you experiencing symptoms of outrage fatigue, like me, I heartily recommend a daily dose of resistance — while resistance therapy has not yet proven to be a completely effective treatment — I suggest that you to give it a try. I find it to be invigorating and a regular dose of resistance might be therapeutic for you too.
Lives are in the balance
Resist.