Opinion: Research before having opinions on Obamacare

Bruce Walton is a senior columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at bwalton4@kent.edu.

Bruce Walton is a senior columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving next week. I also can’t wait to see my extended family, my little cousins, my aunts and uncles and have a great time at my uncle’s house. I’m sure Obamacare will be on the lips of conservative relatives around the table this year, with the “I told you he was nothing but a commie!”and “He’s ruining this country!” And you know they aren’t the only ones this time.

But the conservative and mainstream media have been throwing President Barack Obama under the bus. I’ll have to agree, there are more than a few glitches. There are more than a few speed bumps here; Obama screwed up. Although I’m sure he wasn’t personally in charge of Web design, this is getting blown out of proportion.

Why is this in the mainstream? Why is everyone else is saying this is beyond terrible and as catastrophic as former President George W. Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina? This is a website, not the homes of millions of people. This isn’t the people detained offshore in Guantanamo Bay without a trial. This isn’t starting a decade-long war in a nation we had no actual reason to be in. This is, at best, a broken promise and technical difficulties.

Obamacare was made to give affordable health care to those in need. The fact that so many people tried logging onto the website means they were interested in it. The Republican Party believes it is an unconstitutional law and a danger to America. Although it might just be because of Obama.

I always say if Obama approved of shoes, then every Republican would be barefoot. I trust the administration to fix it, and it is something we as Americans need it. This is not the greatest crime to ever happen in this country, unless you’re going to say the same thing about more than half of the rest of the developed world that has universal health care. I hate talking about Obamacare with people that don’t agree with it. Not because I couldn’t defend it, but because I have to completely dismantle the misconceptions.

So when you sit down with your smug relatives who think Obamacare is failing and it was the biggest fiasco in American history, just tell them to look it up. Don’t base opinions by word of mouth. Seriously. Ask them where they heard of these stories of the effects of Obamacare. Let’s see how legitimate that is. To make a long story short, we all need to wait. It is such a simple problem of tall-tales and rumors that apparently requires a complicated solution of re-educating the masses.