Ed Markey: “what we have is the tea party Republicans' version of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. More than 40 years…”

“what we have is the tea party Republicans' version of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. More than 40 years ago, Dr. Kubler-Ross laid out the five different emotions experienced by people when they faced what they considered to be an awful, unacceptable fate: Making affordable health care available for millions of Americans is anathema to today's tea party Republicans. They cannot accept it. They shut down the government to try to stop it. The tea party Republicans cannot handle the fact that the Affordable Care Act will guarantee that millions more Americans are going to have access to quality, affordable health care coverage; that being a woman is no longer going to be a preexisting condition--women cannot be charged higher insurance rates just because of their gender; no one is going to go bankrupt just because they get sick. Before the Affordable Care Act, medical bills contributed to more than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States. That all ends with ObamaCare, which lifts lifetime caps on insurance coverage. Mr. President, 6.6 million people on Medicare have already saved more than $7 billion on their prescription medicines. The tea party Republicans are in the grip of the political equivalent of the five stages of grief. It is the American people who are getting squeezed. The first stage, denial. The tea party Republicans refuse to accept the fact that the Affordable Care Act is the law.…”