Photo by Fibonacci Blue | CC BY 2.0
Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey is symbolic of much of what’s wrong with Congress today. In a sign of just how out of touch the institution has become with the people, he refuses to even meet with constituents who are angry about his and the legislature’s effort to take away health care from millions of Americans. He won’t hold town halls either, preferring to avoid the unpleasantries associated with publicly stripping health insurance from the disadvantaged and needy, via the scaling back of Medicaid and the removal of subsidies for purchasing health insurance on ACA exchanges. This effort to repeal the ACA is pursued, at a time when members of the U.S. Congress receive a 72 percent premium subsidy for their own federally-funded health insurance, and are also eligible for pre-tax “flex” health savings account (HAS) plans for additional health care costs. The hypocrisy is hard to miss, with members of Congress, most of whom are millionaires, receiving federal subsidies to purchase insurance, while seeking to eliminate such aid to millions of Americans.
Enter the mass protests against repealing the ACA. This citizen uprising has been gaining steam for months, and Republican members of Congress are feeling the pressure from members of their own party, in addition to progressive activists. I’ve been involved with protests of the attempted ACA repeal in my home state of Pennsylvania throughout the year, and have had…