I do enjoy the commentaries of Mr. Sowell and Mr. Williams that are regularly printed in this paper. They both break so many stereotypes and continue to speak truth to power. Having said that, I do take exception with an analogy posed in Mr. Sowell’s letter this past weekend.
While I absolutely agree that the Republicans have a messaging problem, in his opinion piece, Mr. Sowell states that “Democrats … could sell refrigerators to Eskimos before Republicans could sell them blankets.”
The problem with this statement is that if we take that same analogy to its true current situation, Democrats are selling nothing. They are telling those Eskimos that they will be provided refrigerators for little to nothing and all will be paid for by those dirty capitalist Republicans who are taking advantage of the fact that it is cold to sell them blankets … oh, the audacity and heartlessness.
Obamacare was sold to the masses as a cheap method to insure those who in many cases never thought twice about being insured, all to be paid for by those fat cat rich people who have company provided insurance.
Those already covered by government sponsored (and working class paid for) insurance vote yes because it ensures that their coverage is ever more ingrained.
Those in lower economic jobs who do need insurance but always assumed it too expensive and as such never really looked, see this as a personal positive.
Doting parents of 20-something kids who are not seeking higher education say, yes, cover my children until they are 26 (most employee sponsored plans always covered kids enrolled in higher education) because it takes a burden from OUR minds, being the ones who would have to pay if our adult kid got sick or injured.
And all of this would, of course, be provided at a lower cost than those currently insured now pay. Even after covering millions more and even requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions, the cost would go down … magic!
But remember that magic is the realm of the devil and of course, the devil is in the details.
Forget for the moment that the roll-out of the ACA was and continues to be a failure by any business standards. Three years to prepare for this Web-based exchange and so many service denials and bugs?
In the private sector, this level of failure occurring at the roll-out of a major sales effort would result in the near immediate replacement of people across the organization (heartless capitalists).
But hey, it’s the government and it’s for the common good, so give some slack to the incompetent. Fear not, that incompetence is only resident in the IT organization … everything else will work perfectly!
So, my fellow Eskimos, enjoy your new, shiny refrigerators. Never mind that you have no power to your igloo to run said appliance. It will make a fine coffin.
Alan Felts
Peachtree City, Ga.
