I have stopped watching Morning Joe on MSNBC. Although I have recently increased my level of exercise and have tried to be more diligent about the food I eat, deliberately avoiding Joe Scarborough at daybreak has been by far the healthiest thing I’ve done for myself in recent memory.

I should have never started watching Morning Joe in the first place. No one should have, really. Joe Scarborough is a proud polemist of a conservative bent. A former Republican congressman from Florida, Joe brings a Republican-friendly message to a network that leans predominantly to the left. I suppose that MSNBC puts him on the air for “balance.” But, conservatives who would appreciate his message probably avoid MSNBC the way that they avoid NPR, which is to say entirely, and liberals who do watch MSNBC really don’t need to absorb his shit first thing in the morning. I’m not sure who exactly Joe Scarborough’s core audience is, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they all self-identified as “libertarians.” (Or, as I like to call them “douchebags who can’t take a pragmatic political position if their lives depended upon it.” Want to bring all your guns to a gay wedding in an economy ruled by the gold standard and in which the IRS is obsolete and the federal government only focuses on military spending? Congratulations, douchebag. You’re a libertarian.)

I used to think that Morning Joe was a 3 hour news show into which its conservative host occasionally interjected his Republican viewpoint. It isn’t and he doesn’t. It is a three hour showcase for Joe Scarborough to attack Democrats mercilessly while continually offering up his Republican ideology countered by his relatively stupefied and shell-shocked supporting cast. (Mika Brzezinski, bless her heart, is the hapless, albeit beautiful, Colmes to his Hannity. Overmatched both by wits and passion, she typically has no response to his diatribes save for the occasional “Well. No–I just–I shouldn’t–okay, moving on.” She succeeds in pissing me off both as a feminist and a liberal. As a woman with an adopted Polish heritage, though, I’m proud of her roots.)

I suppose he’s always been more obdurate and opinionated then I gave him credit for, but I didn’t really notice how far off the rails he has gone until the healthcare.gov website fiasco. Not coincidentally, that grim period represented the last time I watched Morning Joe.

Anyone who knows anything about the Affordable Care Act, (and I sincerely hope that you do, because I am not giving an overview here), knows that the rollout of the website that non-insured people were supposed to use to sign up was a complete disaster. There were very good reasons, all of them computer-related, why that happened. Never one to miss an opportunity to needlessly criticize President Obama, Joe Scarborough turned the failed healthcare.gov website rollout as his raison d’être for the next two weeks, if not longer. I don’t know, I stopped watching.

Every single morning, rain or shine, Joe Scarborough started his show off highlighting the failure of the website. That in itself is fine. I would even go so far as to say that making the public aware of a massive failure is one of the cornerstones of journalism in a democracy. Awareness brings public outrage which brings change. It is good to be aware. Joe, of course, wasn’t merely interested in bringing awareness. He was interested in using the failed website as a cudgel to beat the President’s policy senseless.

The problems with the website, out of Joe Scarborough’s mouth, became “the worst social engineering policy in the history of the United States.” (He probably didn’t use those exact words. I’m paraphrasing.) Obamacare, a mere two weeks in, was the “worst thing to ever happen to the United States.” I cannot begin to tell you how many times I heard the word “failure” out of his mouth.

Joe Scarborough used the rocky rollout of the website as an excuse to confidently demand that the entire law be repealed. As this is what typically qualifies as “logic” within the Republican Party, I am not surprised to hear it. But to a liberal just waking up trying to eat her Cheerios without choking, it is really unappreciated.

We live in a modern, industrialized world controlled by corporate interests both at home and abroad. This is not the laissez-faire agrarian world of our powdered-wigged forefathers. Certainly, subsistence farmers have a lot more political freedom than a wage-earner working under another man’s thumb, but it’s time to admit the day for that ideology, held so lovingly by states’ rights fan Thomas Jefferson, has long since passed. And in this new world, in which our government’s sole purpose seems to be dedicated exclusively to increasing corporate profits, the expectations of the average citizen have changed. Having access to basic healthcare at minimal cost has become a universal human right…throughout all of the industrialized world save for the United States. In the United States, this most basic of concepts is still up for debate. Since the existence of man-made global climate change and evolution are also still “up for debate” in this country, again I can’t say that I’m surprised. But I can still be annoyed.

If you ask any Republican, including Joe Scarborough, “Does every person have the right to buy health insurance?,” they will probably all say yes and agree with you. Enjoy that moment of agreement, liberals, because when it comes to access to health insurance, that is pretty much where the two parties part ways. (Notice, by the way, that we’re not talking about healthcare itself–no, no. To discuss universal access to that you’d be jumping straight onto the socialist crazy train. We have to take things incrementally in this country and limit our discussions during this decade to access to health insurance.) Because, if everyone is in agreement that people have the RIGHT to buy health insurance, they sure as shit can’t seem to agree on how to make sure that everyone has it.

For example, that is the first wrinkle that the Republicans want to protest against. “Making sure that everyone has health insurance.” We can’t FORCE people to have health insurance, they say. What if someone doesn’t WANT health insurance, they ask. You should have the freedom to CHOOSE whether or not you want health insurance, because this is America, they bluster.

There are two things that are currently true in the United States of America: The government does not automatically provide healthcare to every citizen and everyone, at some point, is going to get sick and die. I wish Republicans would for once forget that they are supposed to oppose everything that Barack Obama supports and admit that requiring every citizen have health insurance is the responsible thing to do. They seem to have no problem, after all, supporting mandatory car insurance, mandatory home owner’s insurance or mandatory flood insurance. On the basis of that track record, they seem to understand the concept of risk pools. But, since Socialist Obama thinks mandating health insurance is a great idea, suddenly requiring that every citizen has health insurance is the most ridiculous notion ever conceived in a democracy.

The second wrinkle is acknowledging the economic burden 48 million uninsured people are placing on our country. Obamacare, for all its flaws, was drafted in an attempt to correct a healthcare industry that was rife with problems. But, to hear Republicans speak about healthcare today, everything about our healthcare system was working perfectly until that Kenyan Marxist plowed maniacally into the Oval Office and starting destroying America from the top.

If by some miracle you are able to get a Republican to admit that everyone is entitled to health insurance and that, yes, having 48 million uninsured people within our borders acts a drag on our economy then, assuming you do not die from shock, you should ask the next basic question:

“How do you expect people to pay for it?”

Because, if you can come to agreement about the two wrinkles that I mentioned above, then you start to really see the gaping flaws in the American healthcare system. We are not talking about something that is provided freely to the public like police and fire services are. (There are millions of us here in America that think that’s EXACTLY how healthcare should be offered in this country, but that is lightyears away from where the discussion in America is today. We have to focus on health insurance, because that is the engine that currently drives our healthcare system.) If health insurance has to be purchased by every citizen, at what point does the government step in to assist those that can’t afford it?

That, of course, leads us to the next obvious truth in America: the majority of people that do not have health insurance do not have it because they cannot afford it. Which leads us to an even more sobering reality: A lot of Americans are really fucking poor. Even if they are living in decent neighborhoods, they are spending so much of their income on housing & basic living allowances that they are finding it increasingly difficult to absorb new expenses. We’re not saving a lot of money, not because we’re out making it rain with extravagant, unnecessary purchases, but because we don’t have any money to save. So how are these people going to afford to buy something that cannot fit into their budget?

If you’re a Republican with a morning talk show on MSNBC, you basically shrug your shoulders and say “That’s freedom. That’s the free market. If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t have to buy it.” If you’re a liberal who confidently thought you were making headway with a Republican, seeing as how you just got them to agree on those first two wrinkles and all, you stare at them like they are a fucking moron.

Because of course the obvious answer (other than the much simpler, much more dangerously socialist “Medicare for all”) is “the government has to provide subsidies.”

Everyone needs health insurance. Everyone needs to buy health insurance. Everyone should be means tested to see what they can afford, and the government should assist anyone who is too poor to be able to afford it on their own.

With me so far? It’s so obvious, isn’t it? So simple. Hard to believe two political parties are fighting so fiercely over this basic concept.

Once those things are established, you can move onto the quality of the health insurance being offered. Because “cost” really is relative when it comes to health insurance, as I’m sure most of us have learned at one point or another. What is the point of having an “affordable” insurance plan for $75 a month if, when you had to use it you learned that it essentially covered nothing you needed? So, clearly, if we are going to mandate that everyone have health insurance, then we should establish that, at a bare minimum, every single plan being offered cover the very basic standards of care. Right? Please tell me that makes sense to you. Because that one issue alone is causing seizures throughout the entire Republican Party. Apparently, no, they do not believe in minimum expectations of services. They want people to have the “freedom” to purchase a health insurance policy that is worthless. They call that “choice.” They call that “the free market.” And they call it all those things with straight faces. I would not want to play poker with these sociopaths. I would lose my shirt.

Not to continue to drone on about the obvious need for Obamacare, but it is clear from our history & the declining overall health of our increasingly poor populace that something needed to be done about the situation. Republicans can rightfully moan about the particulars of what is being done, but for them to howl that Obamacare needs to be repealed in its entirety is a direct affront to the people who are deeply affected by this healthcare crisis.

Because that is another thing about Obamacare: It is attempting to improve a situation that is literally Life & Death. This is not mandating that everyone travel 55 mph on our interstate highways to conserve fuel. This is not mandating that everyone get a social security number. This is mandating that people have health insurance so that they can seek medical attention at a reasonable cost and receive treatment so that THEY DON’T DIE OR GO BANKRUPT.

Worrying about health insurance, or a lack thereof, is probably the greatest unspoken stress in this country. When people lose their jobs, they at least have access to unemployment & food stamps. What they don’t have access to is health insurance. People are afraid to leave jobs they hate for fear of losing their health insurance. Health insurance controls this society more than people give it credit for. Making it easier to get & less expensive will, ironically, provide more Americans with that freedom that Republicans seem to cherish so much.

In short, there are hundreds of valid reasons why the Affordable Care Act is an important piece of legislation that will greatly improve the lives of millions of Americans.

But did Joe Scarborough, (the self-proclaimed “moderate, reasonable Republican”), acknowledge any of that? Fuck no. Obamacare was a huge failure. It is going to prove to be the biggest disaster ever placed upon this nation. It is government run insurance! (No, it isn’t.) It is socialized medicine. (No, it isn’t.) It is going to lead corporations to stop offering their employees health insurance. (There is no evidence that this will happen.) Corporations will start making all their employees part-time so that they do not have to pay them health insurance. (Again, why would corporations shoot themselves in the foot like that? They would suffer a huge loss of employees. Not only that, but that has been Wal-Mart’s policy since long before the implementation of Obamacare.) All because a website wasn’t designed properly and was an unmitigated disaster in its first month.

Joe Scarborough’s the-sky-is-falling reaction to the failures of healthcare.gov would be laughable if there wasn’t so much at stake. I find his reaction to be ridiculous. It would be akin to Harry Truman, upon discovering through his Senate committee that rampant fraud was being conducted by contractors who were tasked with building up the military at the onset of World War II, throwing up his hands from his committee chair and demanding, not that the abuse stop, but that American surrender and get out of the war altogether because, dammit, we just can’t get it right. His attitude is not very American. It’s nothing more than political theater. Which is exactly why I stopped watching.

Because you are free in this country to proclaim that basic human rights should not exist. Of course, that makes you an idiot, that goes without saying. But it makes me a bigger idiot to sit and listen to your nonsense while I’m trying to eat my Cheerios.