I received a phone call today purporting to be from a "CSI (how original?) Research" asking about "general Massachusetts issues." It became quickly apparent that the call was really a Massachusetts-Republican-party propaganda call in support of two guys named Fattman and Little Boy,1 coincidentally the names of the atomic bombs dropped 69 years ago this week on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fattman and Little Boy are running against State Senator Richard Moore and State Representative John Fernandes in my legal-residence district.
The questions were hilarious. Parsing one of them it read basically "Did you know Representative Fernandes was a flaming liberal?" Yep, and he's been one since he was a 20-year-old walking up my sidewalk in 1974 or 1975 to ask for my vote for Selectman. Despite his liberalism, I'm still going to vote for him. Like Tip O'Neill said, "All politics is local."
But one of the questions shows me how out of touch the Republican party in Massachusetts -- and probably elsewhere -- still is about healthcare reform. Based on a question somewhat along the lines of "Did you know Representative Fernandes voted against the Massachusetts health-reform law (that is, RomneyCare) in order to install the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in Massachusetts," it appears the Republicans are going to continue the meme that RomneyCare was great but that PPACA (Obamacare if you are not into acronyms) is bad.
Duh! RomneyCare and Obamacare are essentially the same. They are both terrible distortions of the market that have raised healthcare costs in general, monthly healthcare insurance premium costs in particular, ER usage, and wait times for internists, pediatricians and general practitioners. RomneyCare and Obamacare differ only in that Obamacare has also screwed up Medicare and the U.S. has to borrow from China to pay for the part of it it can't get from seniors. For Romneycare, we in Massachusatts had to cut cops, courts, kids and state parks, raise taxes 20%, and get the rest of the money from the Feds.
1To be honest, his name is not Little Boy but I did not recognize the name of the guy they said was running against Fernandes (like I said this is just my legal residence). A quick Google says some 20-year-old is running against John; hence the historical diversion.