Down with Obamacare, Up with Single Payer!

Comrade Chairman Bernie Sanders and the Secretary of the CitiBank Comintern Chuck Schumer pulled off a major publicity blitz with coordinated protests nationwide in the name of “saving” the Affordable Care Act over this past weekend. What is so astounding is how gullible people are falling en masse for such a con rather than demanding the Old Bolshevik Teddy Kennedy’s single payer Medicare for All, a policy move which would make the United States a bit more humane and civil and bring us up to the same level with the rest of the industrialized world.

My astonishment comes from two places.

First, the Affordable Care Act was not magically put under dire threat the day after the election because of the selection of Donald Trump. In fact, it was on the verge of implosion the day before a ballot was cast owing to the massive fiasco known as the Aetna-Humana merger.

Such is the degree of willful ignorance or political stupidity obtaining in the American population that the right can float idiotic images like these and find believers for it. Making Sanders into a tribune of the people like Lenin is like trying to make a mosquito into a 747.

At the end of the summer of 2016, two major mergers by insurance giants Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna were highlighted in coverage by International Business Times. When the federal government stepped in and sued to prevent these monopolistic industrial coagulations, Aetna turned around and said that they would withdraw from the ACA healthcare exchanges. This is equivalent to a spoiled child giving you the middle finger after you shower him with presents on his birthday because, if you have not heard, the ACA had always been nothing but a massive bail-out for Big Pharma and its hustlers in the insurance industry. There was no penalty or repercussion given Aetna for this ballsy move because, hey, it’s a free market! This in turn sent a massive ripple across the entire system. If Aetna could get away without a consequence for throwing such a tantrum, any of the insurers could!

And on top of that, the grace period of the ACA’s implementation was about to end anyways. The so-called Cadillac Tax was set to roll out in a year. Economist Dean Baker wrote in October 2015 (http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/22/jeb-bushs-health-plan-only-the-healthy-need-apply/):