Miner Queries | Cherie Miner
“Something is broken.”
Ya think?
As I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition last week, I caught a story about the House Transportation Committee grilling airlines over recent service nightmares, including the infamous United episode in which a passenger was dragged from the plane.
What caught my attention was a statement by Committee Chair Bill Shuster (R-PA) who said: “something is broken” with U.S. airlines and “the obvious divide between passengers and the airlines needs to be addressed.”
“That’s rich,” I thought. “He could be talking about Congress.”
Take, for example, the issue of health care. Average Americans have figured out they need help to afford health care, and in our country, health insurance has become the critical element ensuring access to care. This reality led to the development of the Affordable Care Act (ACA aka Obamacare).
And while imperfect, it’s allowed millions more people to purchase health insurance, and it’s guaranteed preventative care for all insured people – no matter whether or not they purchase coverage via the Obamacare exchanges. Obamacare includes regulations that require insurers to cover certain items like vaccinations and physicals – with no co-payments or deductibles.
Unfortunately, it’s taken the GOP plan to put Obamacare on the chopping block for citizens to wake up to the fact that Obamacare helps them.
Meanwhile, our House GOP “Congress critters,” to use Jim Hightower’s term, keep pushing to repeal or gut Obamacare, ignoring the thousands of voters nationwide who have called, e-mailed and appeared at town halls to protest. To paraphrase Shuster, “The obvious divide between voters and the Congress needs to be addressed.”
Voters are finally speaking up and sharing their health care stories and wishes, yet tone deaf legislators insist on repeal. The president’s desire to check “Obamacare repeal” off his list of campaign promises doesn’t help.
So on Thursday, House Republicans, including Iowa’s, voted for a bill that would strip millions of people of health insurance. This is particularly distressing as Iowa faces the likelihood of 70,000 people losing individual coverage as the last provider contemplates leaving our state.
In the midst of this furor, comedian Jimmy Kimmel used his late-night platform to address the issue. Dropping his usual humorous tone, Kimmel shared his recent personal experience as a parent of an infant born with a heart defect. To treat it, his baby was sent to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. After a successful surgery, Kimmel’s son has been released to go home. However, the experience and the people he met along the way affected Kimmel, and he noted that without health insurance, some families might be faced with a horrible choice.
Kimmel concluded: “Whatever your party, whatever you believe, whoever you support, we need to make sure that the people who are supposed to represent us, the people who are meeting about this right now in Washington, understand that very clearly. Let’s stop with the nonsense. This isn’t football. There are no teams. We are the team. It’s the United States. Don’t let their partisan squabbles divide us on something every decent person wants. We need to take care of each other.”
Absolutely. And if Congress is broken, we can fix it – if we hold legislators’ feet to the fire and elect new representatives when necessary. Presidents, too.
Cherie Miner is a local parent, community volunteer, freelance writer and artist. In a former life, she was a corporate writer and public relations professional. Contact her at news@redoakexpress.com or on Facebook.