There was a story in Yahoo News this morning detailing the horrors that occurred in Arizona when they implemented policies similar to those in the Republican health care bill.
I didn’t need to read the story. It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee the bill’s disastrous consequences.
Simply put, it sentences thousands – perhaps millions – to death and millions more to suffering and worry.
But the bill is still likely to become law.
It is one of life’s enduring mysteries. Why won’t we learn from our mistakes?
We keep on believing in theories that might sound plausible but fail when they are put into practice.
Remember the Kansas experiment? That state went full-bore for the trickle-down economic theory beloved by Republicans.
You know, the belief that if you make the rich richer, they will enrich the rest of us.
Politicians justify the notion by comparing it to a rising tide that lifts all boats.
But it just doesn’t work.
It didn’t work in Kansas. The state is now broke.
That doesn’t stop Republicans in Congress from clinging to the trickle-down concept. They claim they will bring prosperity to the rest of us by slashing the taxes paid by the rich.
That’s how they justify their health care bill, which would take nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid to give the richest Americans a massive tax cut.
But I can promise you it won’t work. Like most Republican ideas, it’s an old notion that has failed in the past.
The horrible health care bill they’re rushing through the Senate will not make us more prosperous.
Only a few Americans will benefit from it – the fat cats who contribute to Republican election campaigns.
The rest of us will suffer. And many of us will die.
