Article: The White House Theater of the Absurd

What next, at the Obama White House? While leveraging a host of once-independent nations -- twenty-one, at last count -- to deny any asylum to whistle-blower Richard Snowden, the Obama White House takes the time to undercut its own much-trumpeted alleged reform of our national health care non-system. The New York Times reported on July 2, 2013 that the White House and Justice Department, yielding to some employer complaints, agreed to delay the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act for another year, well into 2015, beyond the midterm Congressional elections.

The particular stimulus for this unconscionable delay has been the provision for fining some employers who fail to meet the health care requirements of the new legislation. Apparently, the rights of all employees -- and particularly those who are seriously ill -- to decent health care, have now been trumped, at the Obama White House, by the desire of some business firms to avoid their own responsibilities. Thus, the Affordable Care Act is being undercut by its backers.

While it is no longer surprising that Barack Obama lacks both the judgment and the courage to make those progressive changes which he promised during two Presidential election campaigns, it is still surprising that his White House cannot even back his own hallmark legislation on health care, the Affordable Care Act. Once more, The Great Equivocator has capitulated to employer interests, choosing to delay or even deny decent health care to millions of employees until their employers are good and ready to provide it -- which is likely to be, never. That is why we need a real national health care system -- but of course, and quite early in his first term, our President caved in regarding any such proposals

In most other modern nations, health care is a right, but it continues to be a privilege in the United States of America. Anyone who doubts that reality should take a good, hard look at statistics on reduced lifespan, infant mortality, and the higher rate of avoidable and treatable diseases such as tuberculosis in the United States of America, as compared to, say, many European countries.

Meanwhile, one of the few real teeth in the Affordable Care Act has been delayed -- even after the Supreme Court found that the entire Act is Constitutionally acceptable and enforceable. Our President claims to be a Constitutional scholar, but he seems to have forgotten a basic legal adage: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied! And Affordable Health Care delayed will have tragic outcomes for uninsured and inadequately insured Americans. All this is truly The Theater of the Absurd. It is also an abomination.