About a month and a half ago my family gathered at our home in Elkhart Lake to commemorate the 10th anniversary of my father’s death. My Dad died suddenly from cancer in 2003. It was a renegade form of Melanoma that doctors had not seen before. Dad was a businessman who owned a restaurant here in town and a theater museum outside of Milwaukee. He was lucky enough to receive the best medical care available even though he ultimately passed away. I have lived with the devastation and grief of his death every single day and it never gets any easier. But it could be a whole lot worse.

Millions of people get sick or hurt and don’t have access to the type of medical care Dad was able to receive. People die every day because they can’t afford to get the drugs or treatment that could prolong their lives. Thousands of families are saddled with insurmountable debt resulting from tragic accidents, disease, genetic conditions or injuries.

This month an already slumping GOP has sunk to an even further low by forcing a government shutdown as a way to attack President Obama and his Affordable Health Care Act.

Following a presidential election in which the GOP candidate managed to alienate women, Hispanics, the elderly, blacks and gays en route to a landslide defeat it was hard to imagine that a new depth could be reached in terms of being uncaring towards a group of people. But we have reached it. In addition to all of those other groups the GOP has managed to alienate, we can add sick and hurt people to the list as well.

Those of you who hate Obamacare, listen up. Everyone applauding the way they’ve stuck it to President Obama with this stunt, just pause for a moment. There is something you must know.

If Barack Obama never ran for public office and became a school teacher at some technical college, we could still be where we are today. If Mitt Romney had been victorious in the 2008 primary, won the 2008 election and won again in 2012, do you know what we would have in America today?

I do! We would have the affordable health care act! That’s right. Obamacare, pal. You know why? Because Mitt Romney practically wrote it. Mitt Romney and scores of other GOP members came up with this health care plan over a decade and a half ago. It wouldn’t matter if Barack Obama were President or not. This is where we’d be today. So this isn’t a political issue at all. This is not some rejection of Obamacare. The only reason we’re on a shutdown today is to lash out at President Obama personally and for reasons we absolutely will not write about here at The Clarion.

The worst part is that none of it hurts President Obama. He already won his re-election. He’ll have a bust on display at the White House. He’ll have a presidential library of his own. He’ll have schools named after him. He’s got all of that in the bag already and there is nothing the GOP or anyone else can do about it. So if President Obama is doing just fine, then who exactly is being hurt here?

People that have life threatening diseases and can’t afford the best care. People like myself who have pre-existing conditions and poor credit ratings. People like a college student named David who is trying to turn his life around by going to school but needs government loans in order to do so. People like a former Madison College graduate named Alex who, despite working full time, can barely afford to put food on the table and needs government issued food stamps to eat. Madison College students like Aaron who is on financial aid and in the middle of a degree program that could be ripped away from him if financial aid is no longer being processed.  All of them are relying on financial support from the United States but won’t be able to receive it if this type of shutdown continues.

You see, people like President Obama don’t get affected when things like this happen. People who can least afford it get affected so that some congressman can feel like they’ve really stuck it to the man.

Shutting the government down to prevent some sick and hurt people from getting more affordable care is a new low in our nation’s history. Doing so at the expense of the millions of people who rely on government care is even worse. It’s time to re-open the government for business and shut down the despicable people supporting this vile act of the far right.