Letter to the Editor - Health Care Bill: The Morning After

Critics called it "a cruel hoax and a delusion," a socialist program that would compete with private insurers and kill jobs. If it passes, Americans will feel "the lash of the dictator," and "end the progress of a great country." One New York Republican Representative said, "Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers." We were told that to cooperate with it would be "complicity in evil."

Am I describing the outcry against Obama-care? No. Those quotes are from promenent Repubican opponents of Social Security in 1935, and Medicare in 1965. Same party as today, though. Same fear-mongering, same predictions that the sky would fall if America extends a hand to its most needy. And now today's Republicans must slouch back to their districts and expain why a bill that prevents insurers from refusing to cover you, or canceling you if you get sick, is somehow the work of the devil. They'll find a way.

Ken Shilling