Quote of the Day

"One thing I’ve been trying to do is discipline myself to use the full name of this law: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,"

-- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), on why he won't call the ACA by its fake name "Obamacare" anymore.

You know, you just want to go up to the dear senator and say, "Just so's you remember things properly, it's the Republican Party that started calling the health care plan 'Obamacare.'  You do remember that, don't you?  It was your party.  You wanted to make health care political and tie it to the president.  You understand that, right??  Democrats wanted to call it the Affordable Care Act, but you wouldn't let them.  So, Democrats finally embraced it to show that, yes, Obama actually does care."

So, please, do call it "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."  After all, when polls have done studies, they've shown that the public reacts well to that name.  When its real name is put up side by side by the politicized name Republicans gave it, the public significantly approves of the law -- even though it and "Obamacare" are exactly the same thing.

So, yes, really, please do call it by its right name, if you want.

Alas, Sen. Johnson is too busy yammering with things like saying -- "I mean, that is Orwellian in origin and let’s face it, it’s really not protecting patients as we’ve seen millions of people –- contrary to President Obama’s repeated promise -– they’re losing not only their coverage, but access to the doctors and treatments that have kept them alive."

While it's nice that Ron Johnson plays around with numbers and facts so egregiously that his charge of others being "Orwellian" is the height of Orwellian irony, the reality that the senator is blissfully overlooking is that there are, actually, around 315 million Americans, and 310 million of them are, in fact, getting better health insurance coverage written into the law, which is why it's called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  And it's worth noting (at least by people other than Sen. Johnson) that those 5 million are NOT losing their coverage, thanks to a directive by the president.  Yet that aside, the whole point of why they initially did get end-of-coverage letters is not because they had this great, cool coverage that kept them alive, but rather because they had these really terrible insurance plans that covered almost nothing and was wasted money -- and those useless plans are being dropped by insurance companies, while new, far better ones are being offered to replace them at an affordable cost.

But if Sen. Johnson wants to call the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by the clever name, "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," I think he should go ahead.  And announcing it proudly to the world seems a swell thing to do.

Mind you, I don't find that overly Orwellian.

More like something out of Lewis Carroll.