Roskam playing with full deck in lust to destroy affordable health care

It's a sad commentary on my Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) that just nine days before the fourth anniversary of enactment of the Affordable Care Act, he cast his 52nd vote to prohibit, abolish or gut it. The 52nd one is stunningly cruel to the tens of millions of Roskam's uninsured fellow citizens. The ACA is already providing a glimmer of hope that they will not suffer financial ruin, diminished heal...th or even death from a health care system Roskam venerates. Of course, Roskam's 52nd vote is an exercise in futility since the Senate won't consider this despicable bill. H.B. 4015, which passed with all 225 other House Republicans Roskam serves as a leader for, would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, delay the individual mandate by 5 years, causing 43 million Americans to be uninsured in 2019, and increase premiums for folks with individual plans by up to 20 percent. Roskam knows full well that the ACA is working as it just reached the five million milestone of folks who have signed up under it. He knows America will never go back to the days when greedy health insurance companies made fortunes by not insuring folks with pre-existing conditions, not paying for preventative procedures, charging women for necessary reproductive services, and having no obstacles for endless rate increases. The Congressman is simply playing to the anti-government Tea Party crowd that cheers on every move Roskam makes to deny services to the needy. Instead of trumpeting its benefits and actually serving his 700,000 constituents, Roskam uses his website www.roskam.house.gov to fear monger against the ACA, in addition to wasting Congress' time considering mean spirited but unpassable bills to demolish it.

But at least one cannot say, that when it comes to trying to destroy the most critical legislation of our generation, an initiative first championed by Republican Teddy Roosevelt in 1901, Roskam, with his 52nd vote against, is not legislating with a full deck.