Pinning big hopes on Mitt Romney? He’s a hypocrite on ObamaCare

By David McElroy · July 5, 2012

Every conservative I know seems to be counting on Mitt Romney to be the great hero to save them from ObamaCare. Romney is playing up the role, of course, trying to fire up conservative Republicans to turn out in November to help him him. But if you’re honestly counting on Romney as your health care savior, what makes you think you’ll get anything better?

After the Supreme Court saved the new health care boondoggle last week, Romney immediately went into a full press against it. Note in the picture what he’s saying he wants to do: “Repeal and replace ObamaCare.” Does that mean he’s going to give us something more similar to the RomneyCare plan from Massachusetts, which is even worse than ObamaCare?

Republicans who support Romney will tell you that there were differences between the two plans, but they’re straining pretty hard to find substantive ones. (This list of things that supposedly makes Romney’s plan less offensive than Obama’s plan leads with the length of the bills in number of pages, as though that’s the issue.)

Frankly, you’ll have a hard time telling them apart. In fact, take a look at this quiz that lists provisions from one of the plans or the other and see if you can tell which is which. Unless you’re a policy wonk who’s studied the bills, you’ll be surprised at how similar they are.

So if you’re supporting Romney because you don’t like ObamaCare, why exactly is that? Is it because you honestly think Romney is going to somehow magically roll back the current law? Do you believe he’s actually going to return us to a free market in health care, which would require undoing at least 50 years of regulations? Do you think he’s going to open up the market to more doctors than the current system allows? Do you think he’s going to give companies the legal power to build hospitals and medical facilities anywhere they want — without state permission? (In Alabama, a company has to apply for a “certificate of need” from the state. If the company has the political connections, it can get this certification. If it doesn’t have the right connections, the existing players in the market will fight the application and very possibly get it killed to avoid new competition.)

Mitt Romney isn’t all that different from Barack Obama on this issue. They both see the need to have government control the health care industry — from doctors, nurses, hospitals, insurance — everything.

If you’re counting on Romney to do anything substantially different from what Obama has done, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You can’t fight the existing evil by supporting another evil that simply wants to take its place.

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I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

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