I have been victimized.
And this isn’t your run-of-the-mill, small potatoes victimization, like say, a home burglary. No, I have achieved the Big Kahuna; celebrity victimhood based on my government’s indifference, indeed, contempt, for a situation that they themselves have put me in.
21st century America is literally inundated with such stories; heart-wrenching tales of the aggrieved, suffering at the hands of, well, someone else – invariably the rich, the powerful, the connected or the reliable favorite, the Republicans.
But offense can as easily come in words. Remember Romney’s 47 percent? How dare he say imply that half the country was sponging off the rest. Indignation is a central component of modern victimhood.
This is all the comfortable couch for the professional Left, so it is new and unfamiliar to me, but yet I am certainly aggrieved.
My story:
A few weeks ago, I received a letter from my health insurance provider telling me that my policy was being canceled, for all intents and purposes, as a result of Obamacare. This was more than a mild surprise, since I had recently absorbed a 20 percent increase in rates (this spring), which was blamed on the new mandates of Obamacare. I thought I had taken my hit and could carry on, but alas not.
The insurance company helpfully included the new, Obamacare-approved policies from which I could choose. But like Goldilocks, nothing fit. The closest I could come to my existing coverage was a policy with a slightly lower premium (good) but with a higher deductible (bad) and a near doubling in the co-pays for doctor visits and prescriptions (worse). There was no way that I could get around having to pay more for the exact same services – with all due respect to the expanded menu of options that I will never be able to take advantage of, like say, maternity coverage.
And just so we are clear, my plan was not a cut-rate plan from a seedy, unknown insurer, as has been alleged from the highest levels of government. Quality health insurance is a personal priority. I shopped around for what I needed at a rate I could afford and settled on my policy as the best option available. I pay (paid) a hefty premium, but I also got top drawer coverage.
Amid my confusion and rising anxiety, I immediately recalled President Obama’s promise to the American people – if you like your health insurance and your doctor, you can keep it. Period. They operative word here being “period,” which traditionally does not lend itself to caveats or interpretations.
And then, turning on the TV, I suddenly realize I am not alone.
Millions of Americans were receiving the same letters canceling their policies – all because of the diktats of Obamacare. Collectively, amid our shock and rising anger, we waited impatiently to hear from the President and the Administration. How do you, after-all, square such an air-tight presidential promise – echoed over and over again from 2009 on – with the mass cancellation of policies that accompanied the rollout of O-Care?
But there was no squaring the promise; only fresh layers of mendacity and obfuscation. POTUS himself even had the chutzpah to say that he never actually promised anything nearly as certain that the 29 recorded versions of his health care assurance would suggest. The core of Obama governance is, after all, never having to say your sorry.
But what became more glaringly obvious amid all the rhetorical contortions was that the Administration has no intention of offering any relief to me and the millions of others who, through no fault of our own, have had their insurance effectively taken away by the President and his signature law. Nostrums to the contrary notwithstanding, even in the liberal ideal, there are winners and losers.
Now, having tried (and failed) to re-write history from whole cloth, or (worse) blame the individual policy holders for choosing “sub-standard” plans, which for a very large cohort were anything but sub-standard, the Administration has settled on a strategy of minimization.
This is simply galling.
The new line – spouted by the President, and loyally repeated in the media – is that the “unfortunate” changes to the individual market, “only affect five percent of Americans.”
Well shucks. Why didn’t you say that to begin with?
Five percent is a nickel on a dollar. It’s a rounding error. It’s a great unemployment rate. Being in the top five percent is coveted in practically all fields of endeavor, from income to educational attainment precisely because it is small and elite. If five percent isn’t good, it is definitely too small to be bad.
So, no matter the cancellation, the cost increases or the new restrictive coverage options, the disruption in healthcare and family budgets, the number, “only affects a small amount of the population,” or so said President Obama himself.
But no matter how good – or acceptable – that sounds as a percentage, the actual real life number is something on the order of 17 million Americans. And that’s actually a big deal.
For the purposes of comparison:
– US killed in every conflict from 1775 to present would total 850,000 KIA.
– The Rwanda genocide has a top end estimate of 1,000,000 people killed.
– The “Killing Fields” in Cambodia took up to 3,000,000 lives.
– The Nazi murder of European Jewry in the Holocaust took 6,000,000 lives.
– The total population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston equals 16.9 million.
Minimizing the damage that Obamacare is causing by dumbing it down to a percentage is intellectually dishonest and cowardly, particularly in light of one other number that no one ever mentions anymore.
30 million.
That’s was the number of uninsured Americans when President Obama embarked on this destructive healthcare reform. 10 percent of the country without insurance is a national crisis and reason enough to upend the entire US healthcare system, but five percent of Americans losing coverage as a direct result of the “reform,” and forced into inferior and more expensive plans, is an unremarkable rounding error?
Outrageous.
I am the victim of an unjust policy imposed upon me by an indifferent bordering on malicious government. There are millions more just like me.
You just messed with the wrong cohort Mr. President. The Left may have invented celebrity victimhood, but you’ve never seen it in action until your policies impact those who work hard, pay taxes and play by the rules. Responsible citizens whose sin is no greater than their belief that they know better than the government how to take care of themselves and their families.
You are about to find out how big five percent actually is.