As a business owner with over 60 employees, who I have provided health care for since starting the company almost 25 years ago, I am perplexed, baffled, and bewildered as to what is behind this health care madness coming out of the House and Senate. Honestly, I know that the vast majority of the Republican members of Congress are smart, caring people who have for some reason gotten a bee in their bonnet that they can only remove by eliminating or drastically changing the Affordable Health Care Act, but that reason is a mystery to me. The only reasons I can come with are:

1. They dug in so much on Obamacare repeal that they feel like they have to keep pushing it just so they don’t appear to be wishy washy.
2. They think that people who can’t get insurance in the open market aren’t doing so just because they are societal sponges or are just lazy people who want someone else (the government) to take care of them.
3. They are genuinely obtuse and ignorant to the plight of the poor, the practically poor and the perhaps hard-to-insure. Having never experience the fear and uncertainty of not being able to afford medical care, how could it happen to anyone else?
4. They just don’t like people whose skin color, backgrounds, social status, or anything else that differs from them.
5. All of the above.

I don’t get it. Or maybe I do. Maybe at its core, it’s really about greed, about their absolute disdain for providing money (taxes) to anyone or anything that they don’t like. This change, if it goes through, will almost certainly result in a tax cut for me. A big one most likely. I don’t want it.

I can and will make more money, but the millions of people being kicked off of Medicaid have no other options. And because I live in this great country, I think I have an obligation to help others who either can’t make it on their own or, in some rare cases, much, much more rare than the right will admit, won’t. We haven’t found a filtering system to separate the “Can Nots” from the “Will Nots” yet, and until we do, I choose to help the Can Nots realizing that some Will Nots will receive benefits too.

I don’t support the incredible, astronomical spending in our military budget, but I support those who do. So why can’t they support those of us that want to help the poor and less fortunate? If Republicans were truly serious about limiting the size and scope of the federal government, they would pay more attention to the military spending which, on its own, makes up over half of discretionary spending in the budget.

They say they’re the party of “no big government”. Hog Wash! “No big government that I don’t like” is what they mean to say. I hope that as the health care debate continues they can put aside their contempt for paying taxes to support poor people, and make the right decision for their constituents.