What would happen if the people of America were aware that there is legislation enacted to ensure that healthcare is accessible for every citizen? My guess is that people across the nation would be outraged at the political hijinks conducted over the past two weeks. “Obamacare” was defeated this past Friday with the pulling of a House bill to repeal and replace the present healthcare law. It is now time to enforce the law of the land that provides healthcare for every American citizen: the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And it is also time to end the war against the ACA over past seven years, a war waged to retain the supremacy of white men. Healthcare legislation in America is not a red/blue, Republican/Democrat or conservative/liberal issue. The only issue ever being contested and opposed is the fact that a comprehensive healthcare overhaul passed under the presidency of a Black Man.
The term “Obamacare” in its most deliberate sense is and always has been “politically correct” degrading verbiage aimed at undermining the then-sitting President of the United States Barack Obama. The term was popularized and circulated solely to provide political cover for elected officials from the first Black president. The result of its usage has been a deepening of the racial gulf that has existed in this nation since the Declaration of Independence. For example, over the last seven years many public health employees across this country have encountered patients who have stated they refuse to accept Obamacare but would gladly enroll within the ACA. This has been a consistent occurrence in one form or another ever since former Speaker of the House John Boehner declared that the legislation being debated is not affordable care nor healthcare but is instead “Obamacare.”
In the last two weeks, the country experienced the first attempt to make America White Again. And this effort is being led by the man who publicly questioned the birthplace and citizenry of a sitting president. Americans have been led to believe that all their current ills, insufficient wages, excessive personal debt, unemployment, gun violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement are the result of the 2010 healthcare law and that these ills would be cured with the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. This past Friday, the House of Representatives accepted reality: The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land.
Well, how do you feel America?
With the more than 50 failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it’s time to move beyond the insistence that white men are superior to all forms of humanity in the United States and instead practice the ideology that “all men are created equal.” How can we do this? Well, we can start with elected officials, the media and you in particular, properly identifying the legislation enacted to provide healthcare for all Americans as the Affordable Care Act, not “Obamacare.”
I am Jaye and I have Something to Say.
Elder Michael Jefferson is a minister at Procession Ministries in Albuquerque.
