In his article, “Barack isn’t my Daddy," Erik Telford’s lack of understanding of the health care bill is significant. As if to simultaneously refute and insist upon his physiological status as an adult (the prefrontal and temporal cortices are still maturing well into one’s 20s), the 25-year-old Telford takes issue with the bill’s use of the word “child”; limits his ageist issues with the bill to those in his age group; misinterprets a passage such that he thinks the government will “force my parents” to do something they will not be forced to do; and uses a 113-year-old legislative failure as the cornerstone of this misinterpretation.
The bill uses the word “child” to reference the offspring of a parent(s). It says, to paraphrase, that insurance companies will, if the parent(s) sees fit, insure his/her child up to age 26. The “force” is on the insurance companies, not on the parents who have policies with insurance companies. Nonetheless, in Telford’s mind this is tantamount to Indiana’s unsuccessful 1897 legislative attempt to define the exact value of Pi as 3.2, even though the health care bill’s use of the word “child” is not used to define people under the age of 26 – now or in the future – as stripped of all rights and responsibilities previously enjoyed by those over the ages of 18 and 21.
The bill addresses the reality of a substantial lack. In the past it was reasonable to assume one would leave high school or college and find gainful employment that, after a period of time, would include health insurance. Such has not been the case for a significant portion of the population for several years now as more and more insurance companies have sought and found ways out of insuring those they considered to be high risk individuals; among them: those fresh from high school or college.
While no reasonable person would suggest the use of the word “child” in the bill’s context is a sneaky way of legislating that those under the age of 26 are now children in the most elementary sense of the word, Telford does. The bill also addresses the elderly by age, but Telford does not address this nor does he call Obama out for possibly redefining the elderly as, oh I don’t know, middle-aged?
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dr Dreadful
I'm amused by the little poll which appears in the sidebar of the article, asking if readers think Obama's decision to open up offshore drilling goes too far or not far enough. 'Too far' is not one of the available answers.
But there's the Washington Times for you.
2 - roger nowosielski
Great article, Diana.
I guess our your man must have some backing to be featured on the op-ed pages of the Washington Times.
3 - Mark Schannon
Diana, well done, indeed. It's incredible the gyrations people are going through to turn a fairly innocuous piece of legislation into the end of democracy & beginning of fascist socialism.
In Jameson Veritas
4 - Dr Dreadful
I guess our your man must have some backing to be featured on the op-ed pages of the Washington Times.
The potted bio at the bottom of Telford's article says he's a strategist for Americans for Prosperity, an organization with the stated aim of ejecting from office every member of Congress who voted for the healthcare bill. Which makes him a darling of the right and, by extension, the Washington Times.
5 - handyguy
Americans for Prosperity is funded by the petrochemical billionaire Koch family. It started as a "grass roots" organization opposing "global warming alarmists." In other words, astroturfers.
6 - Baronius
Telford is wrong on some things, but he's right that the measure "goads...youth to dependency". We've become content with the failure of our educational system and the necessity of a college degree. It's easier to treat people as children for a few more years than to educate them in high school, or even to expect them to work their way through college. We're limiting people's wealth-building years.
7 - Arch Conservative
26? why stop there? Why not 36? This part of the bill reminds me of the old TOYS R US commericals .............
"I don't wanna grow up...........""
Liberals have an uncanny knack for demonstrating how little they expect of people and nothing demonstrates it more than this part of the law.
8 - Les Slater
Arch -7
'26? Why stop there? Why not 36?'
Good question, and why should healthcare have anything to do with parents?
We do not need any healthcare insurance, we need healthcare, period. The insurance companies are nothing but a bunch of leaches, totally parasitic.
Healthcare should be a right, from cradle to grave.
9 - Arch Conservative
Hey Les why don't you go to medical school, rack up hundreds of thousands in debt, then provide my children, who aren't born yet, free health care for their entire lives.
10 - Cindy
education should also be free...
11 - Les Slater
All those who seriously qualify for medical school should be able to go without any costs to them as individuals or of their family. Only those who show progress to becoming a competent doctor should have med school funding continued.
Those that rack up those hundreds of thousand of dollars in obligations from studen loans belong in the same category as the insurance companies, totally parasitic leaches.
12 - Baronius
If Les is here, does that mean that the left can finally stop claiming that "Obamacare isn't socialism"?
13 - Les Slater
Only fools think 'Obamacare' has anything to do with socialism.
14 - Clavos
Only fools think obamacare has anything to do with health care.
15 - Les Slater
Clav -14
It does, at least tangentially. It's certainly not what's needed by the majority of the population. It's part of an attack on our standard of living.
16 - roger nowosielski
Hi, stranger.
17 - roger nowosielski
Baronius (#12),
If part of socialism means eliminating the parasites - like the insurance companies and the like, to include most Wall Street firms which can do no better than making money out of money rather than contribute to the productive capacity of the nation - then I'm all for it.
And so should you!
18 - Les Slater
Hi Roger. Your 17 generally makes sense but it can't be restricted to any one nation. It needs to be the whole world. We don't need national socialism.
19 - roger nowosielski
Exactly. We are entering a new era. Down the line, I see nation-states disappearing.
I'll post in an hour or so. Sure glad you're back.
20 - Anonymonkey
"Hey Les why don't you go to medical school, rack up hundreds of thousands in debt, then provide my children, who aren't born yet, free health care for their entire lives."
Where on earth did you come up with the notion that doctors are now going to have to work for free? Oh right, you made it up, because there is no lie you won't say to win your argument.
Well why stop there? You know Obamacare actually forces doctors to donate there own kidneys to their patients. Its not true, but I can imagine it, so we should all treat it like a legitimate argument, and FREAK OUT!
21 - Ruvy
Hi Les. Long time no see.
We don't need national socialism.
I don't know if it will be national socialism, but it sure is statist corporatism that you are getting. And there will be teeth in the fascist state slowly evolving in America. This is pulled from Infowars.com, but there is very little commentary to it. It mostly recites a section of the new law enacted - the one dealing with how Obama gets to impose military solutions while going around the military.
If you read Italian history, you'll see that fascism there was not imposed overnight. Apparently, Mussolini intinctively understood the concepts later crystallized by Saul Alinsky, concepts now followed by the sitting "president" of the United States.
22 - Ruvy
It's incredible the gyrations people are going through to turn a fairly innocuous piece of legislation into the end of democracy & beginning of fascist socialism.
No gyrations in the information I provide, Mark. I have the same ability to "gyrate" as you. Just a straight reading of the law - and a little understanding about how a crooked mind works....
in nagánes ligt dem émess!
(in grenades lie the truth)
23 - Mark
(Ruvy, the public health 'Ready Reserve' has been in existence in law at least since Johnson.)
24 - Jordan Richardson
Ruvy, is there any crackpot theory you won't give oxygen to in order to support your bizarre visions for the future of America?
You're right, there are problems in the United States. But there are problems everywhere and new solutions must be explored in order to solve these new problems. America is just one in a long line of nations evolving through interesting times, but it is not knocking on deaths' door nor is it on its way to becoming a "fascist state" with a slow process.
Nearly everyone here dismisses your repetitive rambling as just that, which is unfortunate because I think you actually believe these theories and these ideas of yours. But I also think you pull them together based on negligible evidence, outdated theories and nonexistent political ideologies.
Roger understands the need for new solutions in a changing world. It's too bad you're still stuck conjuring visions of Mussolini and devils with pitchforks.
25 - MilkandCoffee
Telford's article makes me nostalgic for death panels.
This is how the Republicans plan to win back the youth vote in November?