CARLTON FLETCHER: Senate health plan: More tax breaks for the rich

I think you will find When your death takes its toll, All the money you made Will never buy back your soul.

— Bob Dylan

Here are the most significant things that are part of the Senate’s proposed health care plan, announced last week:

— We’ll get those damned freeloader handicapped, poverty-stricken and indigent people off insurance plans they can afford and put them back in our emergency rooms, where God intended them to get their primary health care.

— Rich people will get a tax break, because who needs a tax break more than rich people?

— Senior citizens will still be able to get insurance plans, but Kitty and Fido better eat their Kibbles and Bits in a hurry if they’re not in the mood for sharing.

— Medicaid and Medicare cuts will force hospitals, already struggling mightily — especially in states like Georgia, where the wise leaders decided not to expand Medicaid when they had the opportunity because it would help too many poor people, who are likely Democratic voters — to do away with unnecessary expenditures and equipment … like Phisohex, x-ray machines, chemo drugs, nurses, air conditioning, cotton swabs, clean injection needles (These pampered poor people can’t use the same needle six or seven times?!), elevators and surgeons.

— Useless bureaucrats like Mitch McConnell (the inspiration for the old cartoon series “Touche Turtle”) will get to say, “I don’t care if all the poor people in Kentucky die horrible deaths, by God I got rid of Obamacare.”

Wealthy senators will get to sit around and share horror stories — ironically, of course, their idea of jokes — from their various states as they gleefully work to combine their version of health care — which McConnell, David Perdue and the like can boast, will leave even more people uninsured than the wimpy House bill — with the House version to show those uppity Democrats that they can’t get away with sneaking a health care bill through that actually helps all them freeloading poor people.

Certainly these bastions of right and wrong — in their effort to return this country to its rightful natural order … rich white men in charge, everyone else serving their needs — will keep at least one portion of the House’s version of health care, that bit about not letting those low-lifes who’ve already been sick before get any insurance.

The sad thing is that, while these bloated gasbags are pillaging the pocketbooks of the rubes who put them in office — the ones who believe that the Happy Days of Fonzie and sock hops and separate water fountains and keeping the poor and minorities in their place will return any day now — those same people are defending them and their medieval policies as what’s “right” for America. Even as the insurance industry is filling politicians’ pockets with more money than many of these same supporters will make in a lifetime.

Hell, even in Georgia, we have an insurance commissioner who had the temerity to write to the new Human Health Services-designate before he even got into office asking him to do away with existing legislation that posed “hardships” on the poor insurance industry. It’s not enough that our elected officials keep trading their votes — and their souls — that force even more stringent regulations on people who are struggling to make a living for piles and piles of the abundant insurance industry cash. Certain of them have the gall to openly advocate for removal of restrictions that have kept the ghouls of the insurance industry from taking even more of people’s money in exchange for even less service.

So you keep waving your MAGA signs and keep singing the praises of the people who are doing their damnedest to make health care a luxury available only to the wealthy. And I’ll keep whining about their thievery and the bald-faced lies that they feed us on a daily basis. None of it will matter. We’re all going to end up in the same place anyway … dead and dying because we can’t afford to buy insurance or pay escalating health care costs.

Email [email protected] or follow on Twitter @ABH_Fletcher.