This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

In Roskam world, the 40 million medically uninsured simply don't exist

My IL 6th District congressman Peter Roskam has finally thrown in the towel. After 47 votes to abolish the ACA (Obamacare) he has come to terms with its institutionalization into our social safety net as surely as Social Security and Medicare. Now he's pivoted to save face by using his website www.roskam.house.gov to completely misrepresent the ACA to the gullible folks who constitute his base in the 6th, and to placate his Tea Party handlers in Washington using the ACA as the Rosetta Stone to undermine the Obama presidency.
 
Check out his link The Health Care Law – What You Need to Know to get the picture. There is not one word extolling its enormous benefits to the 40 million medially uninsured; not one word about the end of reprehensible, heartless insurance company practices that capriciously deny insurance for pre-existing conditions, enforce unconscionable deductibles, deny coverage on technicalities and cap maximum payouts. Read the entire piece and all those benefits are slyly summed up as "minimum essential coverage", which, horrors, are going to bring calamity to the tiny portion of folks who have terrible private health insurance. In Roskam's bizarre world view, these predator insurance companies, who pay their CEO's tens of millions in salary to find creative ways of denying medical payments, are the cuddliest companies extant, now being preyed upon by the evil Obama administration. Roskam won't tell you that insurance companies have always been raising rates, raising deductibles, cancelling policies, limiting coverage, literally allowing their rich officers to dance on the bankruptcies, broken health and even graves of the chumps who make them millionaires. Instead, Roskam uses sly innuendo to greatly exaggerate insignificant technical issues and faux cancellation horror stories utterly devoid of substance to reap political capital.
 
Awhile back I urged the congressman to take my Obamacare Challenge: go without health care insurance for three months to get just an inkling of what those tens of millions go through 365 days a year. In Roskam's case that might only involve tapping into his substantial personal wealth to pay for what the chronically uninsured simply go without and in some cases die.  They are getting help now, no thanks to a congressman, who, it he had the power, would keep them in poor health and penury simply for his political gain. Roskam may have passed on my Obamacare Challenge, but even worse, he continues to pass by the medically uninsured as if they don't exist. All things considered, that is not a good way to serve the people of the 6th District.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?