By: Walter Carpenter, Montpelier

Mr. Gary Murdock in his My Turn piece, “Republican, sit back and gloat,” (Jan. 8) says the Republicans, who have done absolutely nothing for health care reform, should sit back and gloat over their failure to do anything. He called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) the “greatest wealth transfer schemes the left has ever devised.”

He is wrong that the left devised this scheme. It is actually a conservative idea, first employed by Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, when he was governor of Massachusetts. What Mr. Murdock fails to mention, however, is that the beneficiaries of this transfer are health insurance companies, who largely composed this law.

Mr. Murdock describes Medicaid as “being welfare, comes with strings attached.” Medicaid is not welfare. I am on Medicaid and pay taxes for it, switched over automatically from VHAP by the ACA. I pay for it through taxes, just as people in every other democratic/technological nation do for much better results at far less cost than our health non-system has managed to do. And those people out there who are “content fending for themselves,” as Mr. Murdock put it, on policies with astronomical premiums and deductibles which make an illness a sure route to bankruptcy would greatly appreciate Medicaid or Medicare.

The Republicans better not relax too much. They will be left behind. Many Americans will appreciate not being stuck out there to fend for themselves as best as they can, if they can. I excessively applaud Gov. Shumlin’s march to single-payer.