A Very American Protest

The mainstream media is focused, as always, on the more dramatic aspects of the “town hall” meetings during which astonished members of Congress discover how total the disconnect between the machinations of Washington, D.C. and the rest of America is. If the Democrat politicians could recall anything from the past they might draw some lessons from it, but they are fixated on expanding the federal government’s control over our lives while, at the same time, abandoning anything that passes for common sense. In the July issue of Healthcare News, a publication of The Heartland Institute, a non-profit, free market think tank headquartered in Chicago, Greg Scandlen, Heartland’s Director of Consumer Care Choices, recalled the reaction of Americans in 1988 when Congress passed the Medicare Catastrophic law. Like Obamacare, it was supported by the AARP, essentially a large insurance company, was passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress, and signed into law by Ronald Reagan.