Rush Holt on Health Care Reform: Who Is He Kidding?

Moments after Congress seized control of the apparatus of American health care, I received a celebratory email from my feckless Congressman, Rush Holt (D-NJ12). I'm going to reprint it below with some comments; never have I seen such shameless, blatantly false propagandizing come out of the mouth of an American representative - and yes, I realize that's saying a lot:

I just now voted for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. I want you to know about this development and what the bill means for you. This bill would provide secure and stable health coverage regardless of whether you change jobs or are between jobs, ensure Americans will never be denied care if they get sick, and extend coverage to those not well served by the current system.

And what about those who are well served by the current system, who have worked their whole lives and have specifically selected jobs based on coverage? Well, as my Congressman has oft pointed out, we are the selfish ones...

The bill would strengthen and extend existing programs. For example, those who have health insurance through their employers would benefit from caps on yearly out of pocket costs. Under the legislation, Medicare would be intact, only better – recipients would benefit from free preventive care and better primary care. Click here to read more about what the bill would do for you.

So the government will cap any cost increases that my insurer might need? Won't they then need to cut back on the services they provide? Of course, and that's the point: While the poor might be moderately better off, the middle class's level of medical care will drop dramatically. Welcome to the new Democratic middle, which is really pushing almost everyone into a new bottom. All equal, under one progressive boot...

And - presto! Medicare will now become better, overnight! Why? Because Rush Holt says so! And who's gonna pay for all this?

It would do all these things without adding to the deficit, while it would hold down costs for families in the future.

Well, maybe that's partially true; as every dollar that is not added to the deficit will be extorted from us in the form of $750 billion in new taxes and fees. And even that, while in the greatest stretch, may not add to the deficit over the first ten years (since the taxes kick in before the coverage), it will blast a nuclear hole in the budget from 2019 to eternity. Well, Holt reasons, a lot of folks will be dead by then anyway and won't remember his baldfaced lying.

Anyway - this might be the worst:

This bill is the culmination of one of the most open and deliberative processes in recent memory.

Yeah, OK, Holt, you lying sack of sh*t. That's why you passed the bill late on a Saturday night, minutes before midnight, before you can get home and get an earful from your constituents. Coward.

We have held thousands of town meetings, read hundreds of thousands of letters, and met with health care experts and patients.

"We held thousands", Congressman? You held one town meeting, in which only 238 people were allowed in, many of them pre-arranged AstroTurfies. Is that what you based your decision on? No, of course not, my apologies - your mind was set on this regardless of what the voters of the 12th thought.

After carefully analyzing and reviewing this bill, I believe it will improve the quality of life and the economy of nearly all families and of the nation as a whole.

And what about my family, Mr. Holt? Will I be better served by having to wait weeks to see a doctor, at having my medical decisions made by Washington, by having my taxesincresed exponentially and by having the quality of my medical care decreased exponentially? Will I have a better quality of life 20 years down the road, when the medical profession is a wreck and the economy is still comatose, choked by taxes, deficits, and a crushing new entitlement?

Of course not. But Rush Holt's health care reform, passed while most of the nation was asleep, is not about the average American. It is about Rush Holt playing to a base this is extremely more liberal than his distinct, it is about Rush Holt wanting to say that he helped get more people who happen to be on American soil covered by health care ("yes, thank you, thank you. Let us all bask in my progressive, gentle, decent glory"), regardless of the cost to the remaining 95% of taxpayer citizens.

He excuses that, as the link above notes, by referring to us - the ones who simply want to keep what we have worked so hard to earn - as "selfish", thus setting himself up as a moral arbiter and excusing his grab of private wealth and enterprise as both necessary and correct.

Well, we selfish bastards are going to have a chance to talk back to Rush Holt in about 360 days. Holt's district covers a number of counties, but the bulk of the population falls into four: Monmouth, Middlesex, Mercer, and Hunterdon.

And how did these counties vote in the great Corzine bloodbath of 2009?

Full results here, but I'll do the math.

Christie (Republican): 280,960-
Corzine (Democrat) 205,344-

That's a huge margin and a tremendous swing away from Democrats, some of which I detailed here. Holt's got a strong opponent in 2010 in Mike Halfacre; maybe us "selfish bastards" can then take back what is rightfully ours...