As I said in my first post, I am a very passionate liberal, meaning, although this is a travel blog, expect from time to time to see me blogging about topics other than my time in Istanbul. This is one of those times.
A few days ago, I overheard one of the other Americans telling a non-American student about how, "All Obama's done since he got into office was pass that horrible healthcare bill, and the Supreme Court struck it done, so he has literally done NOTHING since he became president."
On many occassions, when I hear someone spouting conservative or Republican (or Libertarian) viewpoints, I usually keep my thoughts to myself, because I have been known to bite other people's heads off when I'm talking politics. However, in this case, he was SO wrong I couldn't help but interject. This is a summary of what I said, along with some elaboration of my points.
First off, the Supreme Court hasn't even yet agreed to hear the case on healthcare reform, yet along struck it down. It is true that two federal court judges have ruled healthcare reform unconstituional, but two other judges, in separate cases have rules that it IS constitutional.
Staying on the topic of the healthcare reform bill, many people have legitimate ideological and practical problems with the bill. However, I have a few challenges to anyone opposed to "Obamacare":
1) If you are a young person under 26 years of age, or if you have any children under 26, who go off to college, get a degree, study hard, but in today's difficult job climate, can't find a job, you better kick them off your health insurance as soon as they graduate college and not let them stay on until they're 26. Very few young people want to be unemployed bums who do nothing with their life; and if they do, then maybe the parents are the ones to blame. However, these days, getting a bachelors degree is no guarantee of a job and many young people can't find work the insures them and can't afford their own plan. Allowing them to stay on their families plan is one less burden they need to worry about, since they already got to worry about employment, student loans, relationships, housing, food, transportation, etc.
2) If you have a preexisting condition, please let your insurance company know that they can kick you off their plan anytime.
3) If you are currently healthy and have no preexisting conditions, please tell your insurers that you won't mind if they kick you off once you get sick or put a limit on the amount that they are going to cover for your chemotherapy, organ transplant, heart surgery, etc.
If you are not willing to do any or all of these things, then please, reconsider your opposition to healthcare reform. And as for the "individual mandate," coming from Massachusetts, I can say that it has done wonders for insurance coverage here, and noone seemed to be screaming about its unconstitutionality when Mitt Romney was signing it into law.
As for non-healthcare related accomplishments here is an incomplete list of some of the other bills Obama has signed into law:
1) Banning pay discrimination against women
2) Expanding federal hate crime laws to LGBT Americans
3) Consumer protection from credit card company abuse
4) Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which I think we can all agree was long overdue, but would never have happened had McCain/Palin been elected
5) Wall Street reform to help ensure that the corporate irresponsibility which caused the Great Recession never occurs again.
This isn't anywhere near a complete list of everything Obama has done since taking office, but I think it does put to rest this notion that "he's done nothing." As for what he has done, it is fine if you think he hasn't done anything good; but looking at the list above, I'm hard pressed to come up with any rational arguments against any of them.
I have purposefully left out the stimulus package not because I can't find any reasons to support it, but because it would require even more typing, and I'm pretty sure many of think this post is too long already. So thanks for reading all (or some of this) and I promise, my next post will be Turkey-themed.
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