Long before he took an oath of office to serve first in the Louisiana Legislature and later in the U.S. Senate, Bill Cassidy took the Hippocratic Oath.
But one would never know that from the abomination called the Cassidy-Graham Bill that, if passed would replace the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare.
This is not a defense of Obamacare. I know little about the ACA other than (a) it has provided health care for millions, including about 400,000 in Louisiana who otherwise would have no health care insurance, and (b) it’s far from perfect.
From what little I know about it, a single-pay plan seems to be the best alternative—if there must be an alternative plan for one that could probably be rescued with a little bipartisanship and a common-sense approach to correcting and improving existing problems. (I know, bipartisanship and cooperation in politics have gone the way of the telephone booth and Life magazine.)
That said, it’s pretty obvious that the Republicans in Congress are far less interested in the welfare of poor Americans, particularly those with pre-existing conditions, than they are in beating down anything with the Obama name attached to it.
And that’s the issue in a nutshell: Obama. They couldn’t get him on his citizenship or his religion, so they (with apologies to Fed-Ex) “absolutely, positively” have to erase all evidence that he ever existed. In a Congress hopelessly gridlocked on everything, it’s the one issue on which most Republicans are fixated: Get rid of Obamacare if we don’t do anything else—and we probably won’t (do anything else, that is).
Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are just the latest to attach their names to that list of Republicans who would defeat Obamacare at all costs, no matter the consequences to millions of working poor Americans.
That said, their latest attempt at tearing down Obamacare would leave those with pre-existing conditions the most vulnerable. Both senators claim that no one would lose coverage under the latest plot against Obamacare disguised as an alternative, but in reality, their premiums would be unaffordable.
Scott Adams, creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip read daily in hundreds of newspapers, has his own take on Cassidy-Graham, which would transfer responsibility to the states.
“The responsible approach,” Adams says, “would be to test some healthcare ideas in a few states or counties and then work with what we learned. A wholesale change such as transferring responsibility to the states is reckless and, in my opinion, unethical. The unethical part is that moving funding to the states is little more than a political trick to protect Republicans in the 2018 elections. It has nothing to do with helping citizens.
“…I am forgiving of politicians who intentionally exaggerate and ignore facts, so long as their intentions appear to be directed at the greater good. But shifting money for healthcare to the states is for the benefit of Congress, not the greater good.
“My bottom line is that I can support a government plan that involves testing small before going big. But going big on an untested idea is not leadership. It is just bad management, or worse.”
Isn’t it interesting that a cartoonist would have such a firm grasp on the obvious when our elected officials can’t seem to come to grips with reality? But then it was a cartoonist (Thomas Nast) who helped bring down New York City’s William M. “Boss” Tweed.
The issue long ago ceased to be about health care: it’s all about Obama, plain and simple. Nothing else. And whether you like him or not, that should not be the focus—but sadly, it has become an obsession with Republicans, particularly those who identify with two of the most divisive Americans of the 20th century—Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh, with honorable mention to Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and a few others.
It has reached the point that Republicans in Congress are crawling over each other to be the one who can make the claim in his re-election campaign that he was the one who delivered us up from the evils of Obamacare.
And that’s a damn poor excuse to embark on a crusade of destruction.
Cassidy, in taking the HIPPOCRATIC OATH, swore, among other things, to the best of ability and judgment to:
- Apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required;
- Remember that…warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife of the chemist’s drug;
- Not be ashamed to say, “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are need for a patient’s recovery;
- Tread with care in matters of life and death;
- Remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems;
- Remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the inform.
There is another PRINCIPLE taught in health care providing classes that often is mistakenly thought to be part of the Hippocratic Oath but in fact, is not.
It is the Latin phrase primum non nocere.
Translated, it says, “First do no harm.”
The point of “first do no harm” is that, in certain situations, it may well be better to do nothing rather than intervening and potentially causing more harm than good.
Dr. Cassidy appears to have forgotten a lot that he learned.
Or perhaps he was just absent on those days as he was on those occasions when he billed LSU for teaching classes while in he was in Washington.
Louisiana Voice 
It’s become quite obvious that Cassidy has exchanged his sworn oath for a new one: the Hypocritical Oath. This began on the day he changed his lifelong affiliation of Democrat to Republican or rather political expediency over personal values. In other words, Cassidy no longer cares for the welfare of the average American in general or the average Louisianian in particular. Even though I feel and pray this bill will fail, I’ll certainly remember ole’ Hypocritical Bill come Election Day. The same goes for Homily John with all his “back in Louisiana” cheesy quips no one has ever heard of offered up to cover his lack of understanding any legislation he blindly votes for to please not his constituency but rather Trump and McConnell.
Amen. Cassidy and his beady eyes make my skin crawl.
Cassidy and Kennedy are not the only elected officials that don’t even pretend to be concerned about the real needs and opinions of their constituents. We need to ask ourselves why voters continue to elect these folks that do not have good records of public service and openly lust after their political party/s approval. As Pogo once said, “I have met the enemy and he is us!”
Your nicely written denunciation of Sen Cassidy as a deviant of Hippocratic ideals is marred (as presented on my email) by the accompaniment of a rather graphic side view of the arising of a penis to “f**k all night again”. A better assessment of your advertiser’s plans for your site is warranted and encouraged.
LouisianaVoice does not accept advertising. Only recently has WordPress, the domain that I have been using for this blog for six years, begun sneaking advertisements onto my posts. I resent it and it is unfortunate that they choose to do this—but it is beyond my control. I don’t even get a cent of revenue from the ads.
My deepest apologies to anyone who is offended by this but be assured it is not the policy of LouisianaVoice to accept any advertising and certainly not of this nature.
Tom Aswell, publisher
Tom,
To all your reader’s who are aghast with porn advertisements in their web browser when viewing you blog. The advertisements are partly based upon cookies left from other websites. In essence the porn advertising they are seeing might be based upon the existing cookies left on the pc. The primary issue is not with WordPress but with what has already been viewed.
Tom, another reason (and the prime one?) the Repubs in Congress keep going after the A.C.A. is the abolition of that program is what gives them the money for “tax reform” which will give the one percenters their tax cuts.
Also, they’ve been told by their rich benefactors and contributors: “no more dollars for you until you get rid of Obamacare and pass ‘tax reform’ ; the checkbooks are closed until then..” See this article:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/koch-network-piggy-banks-closed-republicans-healthcare-tax-reform
Another thing the Frankencassidy/Graham plan does is that it punishes the states that expanded their medicaid program and rewards the ones who didn’t by reducing the dollars to those states who expanded medicaid. Louisiana is one of the states that gets “punished” by a lower amount of money in the form of the block grants they use.
This chart shows how much Louisiana among other states would lose under the G-C plan.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_480w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2017/09/20/National-Politics/Graphics/2300-acadynamics-v2.jpg?uuid=rIbJTp5aEeeyp7xwtvmAiQ
I have not seen any ads on my emails good or bad!
The ads don’t appear on emails, only embedded in the articles. When I signed up for WordPress, it said I could either have the service for free but have the ads or pay I think around $10/month for the no-ad option. I chose the no ad option.
Then I got told my site would look much better if I installed the shareaholic plug in, so I did. The ads started popping up (especially Eatel). Hence, I deactivated shareaholic.
Next, my site got hit with malware that caused IPads to say, “Congratulation, you’re today’s lucky winner of a Wal Mart gift card.” So, I had to call Bluehost, who hosts the site. Solution: For $480/year, Sitelock will ensure that never happens again (BTW, the same thing has happened to major websites like The Advocate). So, that was another $480/year I had to shell out.
Then I go to EBRP Clerk of Court Friday and make 29 copies of documents I need to substantiate a post I’ll be making soon. They tell me, “$29.” I asked, “What happened to $14.50?” He points to a sign (that’s at checkout and not at the monitors you print at) that the Legislature just passed a law to make all copies $1/page for all Clerks of Court.
The cost of hosting these type sites is indeed getting completely out of control, and the Legislature voted to make it more expensive for investigative journalists to get the documents in the hope they will curtail investigations. Sadly, it will likely work, and that is indeed a very unfortunate development.
Corruption everywhere and technology is a pain. Thanks for the sordid explanation…
AMEN!
A few days ago there was a news story on healthcare. It mentioned that corporate provided health benefits under a family plan cost about $1800 / month. The fortunate employees only had to pay a portion of that, about $500/mo. When I moved to Dallas I had a plan for family of three that cost us $150/mo plus a small deductible.
I just want my old plan back. Government has no business in my healthcare.
https://www.straighttalkla.com/single-payer-medicare-for-all-exchange-failures/
Good article explaining what would happen if we went to single payor. Obamacare sucks, and so have the Republican ideas to fix or replace it. But until they have to follow the same rules that we do, it will NEVER get any better.