Speaking Truth to Power
The People, Buck, and the ACA
In this age, the ultimate testimonial to a public servant who does his duty is “He speaks Truth to Power.” Someone who speaks truth to power puts honor above expedience and responsibility above success. It’s the trait we want in our leaders and admire in our colleagues. When it comes to our representative in Congress, we deserve nothing less. A Patriot speaks truth to power.
So let’s talk about truth for a moment.
Here’s a real family who lives on 40 acres in northeastern Colorado. Mom does farm chores with their sweet toddler in tow. She keeps chickens and cares for a small herd of cattle and horses that Dad needs for his work. He’s a pen rider at a feed lot. Every day he rides his own horse from pen to pen, checking anywhere between 6,000 to 11,000 head every day, looking for sick cattle to sort out of the pen and doctor. It’s a lot more dangerous than being a cowboy on the open range, hard on the horse and hard on the man.
To do this, he’s paid $33,000 a year. He works a lot of overtime but doesn’t get paid for it. The job doesn’t come with any benefits. It’s just a little too much pay to qualify this family for expanded Medicaid. And every day Mom worries until her man makes it home in one piece.
Dad’s a combat veteran, so he gets health benefits through the VA system. Their little boy qualifies for CHIP, but Mom goes uninsured because they can’t afford the $185/mo that an ACA plan would cost. They want another baby, badly, but she’s in her thirties, so they’ve ruled it out because the plan still won’t cover the care she needs to ensure a healthy but high-risk pregnancy.
This is the family that Ken Buck thinks needs to work harder. They shouldn’t get squat, he thinks, and pretty much, they don’t.
This situation is true. Ask yourself: Is this ok? Is this how it is in America? How it should be?
Keep that in mind, and now let’s talk about power.
Ken Buck has, unlike many Congressmen, come to town halls to talk with constituents about health care, and he has not been shy about expressing his views. In one of his more memorable voter encounters, a venomous Buck spat: “I will never support universal health care. Able-bodied men and women shouldn’t get squat!”
It’s on record. And we aren’t going to let him forget it.
Buck is backing up those words with actions. He is doing everything he can to eliminate Medicaid, voting for the House’s wildly unpopular ACA repeal bill, the AHCA, and actively speaking out against the existing exchanges at every opportunity. When the very real hardship of Ken Buck’s constituents bumps up against Buck’s free market ideology, reality never stands a chance.
Ken Buck thinks our little family must be malingerers, undeserving of health insurance because they did not go to Princeton and become lawyers like he did. He thinks they shouldn’t get squat. And because their income peaks out above the minimum to receive Medicaid, they don’t. They work hard, and they feel fortunate to have work, happiness, and each other.
For now, they have good health. But they know they’re at risk. And they are not alone.
Colorado is a Medicaid Expansion State, and has the most successful, best-run Health Insurance Exchange Marketplace of any state. Post-expansion in 2014, roughly one in five Coloradans was on Medicaid. By spring of 2017, it was one Coloradan in four.
A disproportionate number of Colorado’s Medicaid recipients live in the Fourth Congressional District, which contains counties ranging from 22% to over 40% Medicaid enrollment. In other words, the population Ken Buck represents (that’s us) will be greatly harmed by any bill that caps Medicaid benefits or ends the Medicaid eligibility expansion.
How many more moms without health insurance do we want?
“Able-bodied men and women shouldn’t get squat,” says Ken Buck. Pen riders, who don’t get health insurance as part of their job, shouldn’t get squat. Farmworkers and cooks and janitors, all professions whose average income falls below the Medicaid threshold for a family of 3, shouldn’t get squat.
Child care workers and dish washers and hairdressers also shouldn’t get squat. None of those professions typically get health insurance either.
Colorado has a booming economy. In May, the Denver Post reported a historically low unemployment rate of 2.3%, a record for Colorado and currently the lowest in the nation. An unemployment rate that low means that everyone who can work, and wants to work, may. But that doesn’t mean they get health insurance.
When you have a low paying job, you get squat. You get no benefits from your job, but Ken Buck wants to make sure you get no benefits from government either. And Ken Buck doesn’t care, and he’s not ashamed to lie to us about it when he remembers to.
The Republican Party is doing all it can to help the ACA fail, with tactics designed to raise premiums and drive insurers out of the individual marketplaces.
They are not concerned that people with chronic conditions can’t get insurance without the ACA. They are not concerned with home care workers or cafeteria attendants or food processing workers not getting Medicaid. It does not bother them that over half of people without health insurance struggle to pay their medical bills, and are often one hospital visit away from bankruptcy.
Is Ken Buck speaking truth to power? He has shown that he cares far more about power than truth. Buck’s voting record so far shows 97.3% alignment with what Trump asks for. To the President, his message (we are paraphrasing, of course) is “I am your errand boy. You can count on me to amplify your wishes to my colleagues in Congress and to the public, regardless of the plight of my constituents.”
Buck has loudly supported the AHCA, the Republican’s health repeal effort, calling it a “principled, conservative position.” In fact, he mentions his principles six times in his article on the subject. He mentions families once.
And Buck made it very clear what he means when he says principles: “In fact, our entire agenda of principled conservative policy relies heavily on healthcare action. Without a successful repeal of ObamaCare, tax reform will be that much harder to achieve.”
Principles means tax reform — you don’t get much clearer than that. Ken Buck may not speak for Truth, but he certainly knows how to speak for Power.
But if we are not wealthy enough to benefit from the tax cuts in the AHCA, Buck doesn’t feel the need to represent us. [All of those tax cuts, by the way, go to people earning over $200,000/year.] In his mind, the rest of us are not working hard enough, and we don’t deserve squat.
There’s his mistake. Ultimately, every voter is a power who determines Buck’s future. Liberal or moderate or conservative, we all need health care. Buck’s callous attitude proves that he does not represent us, does not consider us in his decision making, and does not care what happens to us as long as we continue to vote him in.
It is time for we voters to speak our truth, exercise our power, and elect a representative with integrity. Ken Buck should have to work for us to get our vote, and so far, he has proven himself to be a malingerer. From us, he doesn’t deserve squat.
We can improve the health of CD4, and the health of our nation, by electing representatives who care about the people. Spread the word.
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Originally published in The Weathervane No 7 on July 7, 2017. [Subscribe]
