Over at Forbes, Shikha Dalmia works herself into a rage over the passage of ObamaCare via such parliamentary tricks as, you know, majority rule, and offers the following summation: “It is hardly surprising then that Americans are feeling a growing panic as they watch their constitutional republic descend into a banana republic.”
Shikha, honey, the Democratic Party has been running on universal health care for the past 20 years. In 2008 the Democrats, who were already the majority party in both houses of Congress, increased their margins in both houses. President Obama won the largest majority of any first-term president since Eisenhower. Precisely why is the passage of universal health care a sign that the U.S. is becoming a banana republic?*
Over at the New Republic, Ruth Franklin, writing a review of Lionel Shriver’s latest novel, So Much For That, is pretty mad too. So Much For That is the tale of an earnest, hard-working fellow who manages to save up $1 million for his retirement, only to discover that his wife has cancer, so he can’t quit his job and retire to an unnamed but presumably pleasant island, as he had planned, because if he does he and his wife will lose their health care coverage. So he soldiers on, working at a job he doesn’t like and spending down his nest egg because his wife, naturally, doesn’t receive adequate health care from the cheesy, capitalist insurance company that his cheesy, capitalist employer has foisted upon them.
According to Franklin, So Much For That isn’t really about health care, or at least not just about health care. “It is, instead, a novel of fury only barely contained, fury at an American way of life that is so broken and dysfunctional that it has become impossible for people to conduct their lives in a decent, humane way.” So I guess in the old days everyone got excellent health care for free, whether you worked or not. Is that how it was, Ruth?
*And, Shikha, honey, you may recall that in 2000 George Bush was “elected” despite receiving fewer votes than his Democratic opponent Al Gore. Democratic attempts to obtain a recount in Florida were overruled by what was easily the most dishonest Supreme Court decision in U.S. history, “rammed through” by a 1-vote majority. Did you feel you were living in a banana republic then?
