Thumbs & Whine

Watching the news these days is an utter bore. I'm fed up with the ongoing right-wing whine about Obamacare and their fruitless efforts to squelch it. In short, our lawmakers are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses and not doing the jobs we elected them to do. If I hear one more belligerent republican state "the majority of American people don't want Obamacare" I'm going to reach into the television and strangle them. They do not speak for me, or millions of other Americans who are in dire need of decent healthcare.

To that end, I read the following bit this morning:

• A Small Business Response to Obamacare

To quote some of the article as it was displayed in Shelf Awareness:

On his blog, Jarek Steele, co-owner of Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Missouri offered a "small business response to Obamacare" noting that the indie bookstore "pays 100% of our full-time employees' health insurance premium. I'll also let you in on another secret - by the end of this year, my bookstore will have paid $270,550 over the past five years for health insurance. Our group is (obviously) small; an average of 12 people are enrolled. Each bookseller's premium averages out to about $415 per month. We each have a $5,000 deductible.

"The message being blasted from the rooftops of opponents of Obamacare this week is that those figures I just gave you are precisely why Obamacare is unfair, that it will put a burden on individuals and small businesses like mine and force us to increase what we spend on healthcare. They don't want you to know that many small businesses like mine actually think that having health insurance is an important aspect of having a functional, happier, healthier, more productive employee. This small business in the reddest of all red states - count me in."

As for the daily news, every time I hear mention of healthcare on CNN or MSNBC the television goes mute or the channel is quickly changed. I'm simply disgusted by our lawmakers and their inability to do an honest day's work, and I'm tired of hearing about it.