A lot of my friends are political junkies. Not me. Not anymore.
I can't watch real-time TV; if there's a show I want to watch, I record it so that I can fast-forward through the attack ads.
Next month I'm going on vacation to someplace where there is no election under way. I need a break.
In particular, I hate the stealth groups that, according to the Washington Post, have amassed many millions of dollars to unleash ads trashing the Affordable Care Act. They will lie about what's in it, and few people will know enough about the law to spot the lies.
The aim of the ads is to defeat Democrats. If history is any judge, the Democrats will do a poor job of setting the record straight.
It will be left to reporters to try to do so. But we're being drowned out.
As the Post reports, some of the sources of those millions are companies and trade groups that aren't required to reveal their role, including many that profit from the status quo. They include Aetna and the pharmaceutical industry, both of which signed off on the law but are now sabotaging it.
I find it a continual source of wonder that so many people in America don't care about the uninsured. Those who get their health coverage paid by the taxpayers -- including state and federal lawmakers, veterans and Medicare beneficiaries -- but denounce government-paid health programs in the same breath particularly irk me.
Too many people in America seem to think that those who don't get insurance on the job must be somehow to blame, and if they die long before their time, too bad.
They prefer to think of the uninsured as illegals or as lazy bums, but the vast majority are neither. They are hard workers, good people who do their best to provide for their families.
Read this account from the Associated Press of what happens to the working poor who are uninsured. The setting is Texas, but it could just as well be Florida.
--Health News Florida is an independent online publication dedicated to journalism in the public interest. Contact Editor Carol Gentry at 727-410-3266 or by e-mail.
