Your Church is Gaslighting You Because You are Dishonest.
This post is a direct response to a piece that appeared on the Huffington Post titled "My Evangelical Church Is Gaslighting Me, But I Refuse To Fall For It Anymore."
The article linked above is chock full of dishonest accusations and talking points that typically appear on MSNBC which cannot withstand five minutes of serious cross examination. I was content to let it go and simply blow it off as just another smear from the left that most anyone with access to an internet search engine could debunk for themselves within minutes, until I came across a section that enraged me personally:
In the summer of 2017, when the Republican Party began trying in earnest to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid funding, I cried out in protest. I have a medically fragile child, and insurance that covers his multiple pre-existing conditions as required by the ACA, as well as Medicaid, is one reason he is still alive today. But, for the most part, the Christians I pleaded with ignored me or made flimsy excuses for supporting the Republicans’ efforts to destroy the ACA.
There is a laundry list of directly implied lies in this paragraph that angered me personally and to understand why I first need to explain something about myself.
My adopted daughter had her first heart surgery when she was eight days old. To put it simply most of the plumbing that connected her heart and lungs was defective. My daughter went on to have multiple heart surgeries as well as multiple eye surgeries by the best eye surgeons in the world. My daughter has multiple severe to catastrophic medical conditions including being special needs.
My wife and I had good private insurance that was affordable, which was a blessing because the medical bills amounted to millions. We had occasionally encountered some resistance in getting everything paid for in a timely manner, so I went to Indiana insurance school and passed the state insurance exam on the first attempt so that I could become an expert in the insurance policy and laws. That expertise helped me to navigate an at times complex billing system, but in the long run, private insurance served our needs better than most anyone could have hoped for.......that is, until Obamacare passed the Congress by the slimmest of margins.
President Obama and Democrats en-bloc promised, "If you like your health care plan you can keep it":
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kyHOPEZV8]
President Obama promised that health insurance would cost less than a phone bill:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lT4VzH5xY8]
The promises made by Democrats were so outrageous that they even made the left leaning Politifact's Lie of the Year in 2013.
The affects on my family proved disastrous. We received a letter stating that in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) our employer based health plan was being canceled, the new ACA compliant plan, subsidized by my wife's employer, was quite a bit more expensive and had larger deductibles, but we could still afford it.
Every year the premium increases and deductible increased jumped significantly, every year the money out of pocket for my daughter took more and more away from us, until eventually we could no longer afford the insurance and our daughter had to go on Medicare. We were not alone. Countless millions of Americans were put in the same boat:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQjvbCo13vE]
Why didn't we just buy an "affordable" Obamacare plan for our daughter? Because both my wife and I worked we did not qualify for the subsidy. Affordable meant premiums in access of $700 per month with deductibles up to $6,000.
My wife and I were forced to deal with a disturbing new realization. While we had private insurance we had access to the best doctors in the world for our daughter, but a great many doctors do not take Obamacare or Medicare, so the choice and quality of doctors became drastically limited.
More people lost insurance than gained it with Obamacare. What did the Democrats have to say? They said that it was a good thing because private plans like I had "are phony plans" (their words) and we were better off without it... well no we weren't.
But what about pre-existing conditions Democrats shout?
MY DAUGHTER HAD PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS THAT WERE ALREADY COVERED BY LAW WITH OUR PRIVATE EMPLOYER PROVIDED HEALTH PLAN.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Employer based health plans are group plans. Group plans by law, according to Public law 104-191 also known as HIPPA – Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act – of 1996 outlined in sections 2741, 2742 and 2744 the role that both health insurers and state regulators must play in ensuring coverage for those with preexisting conditions. That law was supported by both Democrats and Republicans for more than a decade before Obamacare.
The vast majority of Americans with insurance, my family included, already had coverage for pre-existing conditions with insurance bought through their employer. Plans that the so called Affordable Care Act took away from them. The simple fact is that it is Democrats who took pre-existing condition coverage away from countless millions of Americans, not Republicans. Millions more people lost their insurance than gained it with Obamacare plans and my family is among them.
In-spite of outrageously dishonest Democrat campaign ads this past election season, the Republican plan to replace Obamacare, the AHCA, includes $100 billion to insure coverage for pre-existing conditions.
The Huffington Post article goes on to blast Republicans for cuts in Medicaid funding. The Affordable Care Act only increased funding to state Medicaid programs for a set number of years until it incrementally sunsets, so Medicaid subsidies were already set to be cut by the Affordable Care Act, a law that passed without a single Republican vote.
At least the Huffington Post writer was careful enough not to mention the $716 BILLION the Affordable Care Act cut from Medicare in order to help pay for itself.
There is so much more in the Huffington Post smear piece that is easily debunked and all it would take is space and links to verifiable evidence, but for the sake of brevity I will pick just one other part to respond do.
Under the section marked "Purity and Politics" the Huffington Post writer states:
The church’s obsession with sexual purity defined my adolescence. The ethics of sexual behavior limited physical intimacy to the marriage of man and woman. And at the time, the political values of Christians lined up with this teaching. Bill Clinton’s infidelity was unforgivable as well as evidence of a political party embraced by Satan.
But when the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape leaked to a shocked nation in 2016, Christian Republicans doubled down on their support of a man who openly bragged about sexual assault.
“I don’t even wait,” Trump told the show’s co-host Billy Bush. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
I cannot read those words without having a visceral physical reaction. I am sickened by Trump’s words themselves...
It is certainly no secret that Donald Trump has a past of being a near stereotypical billionaire playboy. He was one and he acted like one. No one disputes this. My objection is the drawing a moral equivalence, or even presenting Trump's behavior as morally inferior to the Clinton's.
I hate to split hairs Miss Huffington Post writer, but "if they let you do it" it is not an assault. No one is saying or has said, "Donald Trump raped me." In fact, Trump's ex-girlfriends, in spite of the lies published by the New York Times, have defended (2) him.
Bill Clinton has multiple, credible allegations of rape and genuine sexual assault against him. Two of the dozens of women who have spoken out are Juanita Broaddrick (2) and Kathleen Willey.
In the case of Kathleen Willey the Clinton's hired thugs like Anthony Pellicano to threaten and silence various Clinton accusers. Willey was followed one day when she went jogging. A jogger ran up to her, threatened her, mentioned her children's names in a threatening manner and spoke the name of her cat in the past tense. When she came home she found her cat dead on her front porch. While Donald Trump has a record of being a playboy in years past this occurred while Clinton was President of the United States.
Willey is not alone in reporting such incidences. According to Disk Morris, who was the Clinton's closest political advisor for years, Hillary was the Chief of what he called the "Clinton Secret Police" that routinely threatened and intimidated those who could do them political harm. Morris really liked Bill Clinton, but has always said that Hillary is too corrupt to be President:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJu5N7LaufM]