October 16, 2013 - 9:22 am
Supposing that the federal government eventually gets Healthcare.gov to work, many Democrats believe that Obamacare will eventually become popular. While some Americans will come to depend on Obamacare and its subsidies, driving up dependence on government and solidifying more Democrat votes, their signature law will always be a divisive, controversial law.
1. No Republicans or independents voted for it or had any input into it. Obamacare is a Democrat law designed to impose Democrat goals. Republicans and independents have no stake in seeing it succeed, and Democrats respond to their objections with insults — you’re racist for opposing it, or you love X more than you love America for opposing it. That won’t win anyone over. Because Obamacare imposes offensive, wrongheaded and damaging policies, millions of Americans have a stake in seeing it fail. Democrats tend to respond by noting that the conservative Heritage Foundation once supported something similar to Obamacare, and Republican Gov. Mitt Romney enacted something similar to it in Massachusetts. Fair enough, but the Heritage Foundation is an idea factory and has since repudiated its support for Obamacare-style mandates. Romney governed a blue state and got the best deal he could get from its overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. What’s enacted in Massachusetts is not necessarily right for Oklahoma or Florida or Texas. Democrats’ response: It’s the law now, so deal with it. They don’t apply that logic to the Second Amendment, and no one is under any obligation to simply accept Obamacare just because it’s currently the law. Laws are changed and repealed all the time. That’s why we send representatives to Washington and to our state capitals.
2. Democrats crafted it in secret and bought the votes they needed to get it through Congress. Barack Obama promised to deliver the most transparent administration in American history, but on his signature law, he not only failed, he practically demanded that the law was built in secret. The “Louisiana Purchase” of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vote and the “Cornhusker Kickback” to buy Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote will forever tarnish Obamacare as a corrupt bargain.
3. It doesn’t actually help Americans buy insurance by making it more affordable. It just orders us to buy insurance or face the IRS. It orders employers to provide coverage for their employees or face the IRS. The IRS is the most feared, and one of the least trusted, government agencies, and Obamacare jams it into our most personal decisions. Obamacare’s implementation has also been fundamentally unfair: Democrat allies got exemptions that the rest of us couldn’t get. The math just doesn’t work for Obamacare to make insurance cheaper. By forcing companies to take on new risk and not allowing them to charge more for assuming that risk, Obamacare forces them to charge more — a lot more — to everyone. Many individuals and families will find their work hours cut so their employer can avoid Obamacare’s mandates, while their insurance prices will go up. Less income plus higher costs will condemn many Americans to a poorer standard of living. The government’s answer is to subsidize some of them, but that money has to come from somewhere. Some Americans’ taxes will increase to pay for other Americans’ subsidies. This will drag and distort the economy in ways not even fully understood yet.
4. Abortion is controversial. Obamacare makes Americans who oppose abortion pay for abortions. Millions of abortions.Obamacare sidesteps the Hyde Amendment and subsidizes about 115,000 abortions per year according to some estimates. Forcing Americans who object to abortion to pay for abortion will never stop being controversial. Ever. It just won’t. As a pro-life American myself, I hate Obamacare as much for its social policy as for its economic policy and for its robbing us of our rights. It’s the trifecta of awful policy.
5. The majority of Americans objected to Obamacare when the Democrats passed it, but they passed it anyway. Democrats’ response: Call people names and pass the bill to spite them. They now defend the law partly out of spite, using lines like “if you don’t like Obamacare you must want people to die!” The law is now a talisman on the left and a grave offense in the center and on the right.
6. It imposes blue-state policies on red states that don’t want them and are doing fine without them. Texas leads the nation’s economy and has for years, thanks in no small part to its avoidance of big government policies typical of states like California, Illinois and New York. Obamacare takes Texas’ ability to determine its own health care policies away from it, and imposes California’s and Massachusetts’ policies on it. But Texans didn’t want Obamacare and don’t want to be California. Democrats’ response: Too bad, now shut up and stop complaining. The “I told you so” chorus will only get louder as Obamacare hurts states and jeopardizes state budgets.
7. Even if you like your doctor/health insurance/job, Obamacare may not allow you to keep your doctor/health insurance/job. Doctors are retiring in droves to escape Obamacare. Whole health care providers are shutting down because Obamacare is killing them. Many insurance companies are now notifying policy holders that due to Obamacare’s mandates, those policies are being canceled. Or, they’re going to cost a whole lot more. Employers are reluctant to hire new employees due to Obamacare’s mandates, and are cutting hours to escape its 50 employee, 30 hour mandates. The pain of all this is only now beginning to spread around the country. It won’t make the law any more popular than it currently is.
8. Younger, healthy Americans are being force to buy a very expensive product at the beginning of their careers, when they earn less and can least afford it. People at the beginning of their careers tend to earn less than people in middle age. They’re also healthier and use less medical services than people in middle age. But Obamacare orders younger, healthier Americans, at the point of an IRS gun, to buy health insurance that in most cases they don’t really need. The math of Obamacare is driving policy prices upward. Young people are getting ripped off, and the mandate + price hikes will dent their earning power for as long as Obamacare remains the law. Younger Americans’ right to make their own choices are being taken away from them.
9. It was built to fail and usher in a government-run health care system that Americans have consistently opposed for decades. Sen. Harry Reid let this slip earlier this year, that despite Obamacare being “settled law” as the president puts it, it’s just a way station toward a government-run health care regime. Americans don’t want a government-run health care system, fearing that it would take the world’s most innovative health care system and turn it into the DMV or the post office. Conventional wisdom says that once Obamacare fails as it was designed to do, Democrats will just claim that “hey, we tried” and then impose their preferred government-run system. If they control the government when Obamacare fails, that’s exactly what they will do. Their tactics when they passed Obamacare itself are proof of that. But Obamacare’s failure may discredit the Democrats, who passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote and insulted the law’s opponents all along the way. But the very fact that it’s credible and reasonable to state that Obamacare was built to usher in even more dramatic changes that most Americans oppose ensures that it will remain controversial.
An iconic Michiana company is closing.Tuesday, FOX28 talked with owners of the Bonnie Doon plant and downtown Mishawaka location. They tell us there are many reasons for the shutdown such as the declining economy and the rise in production costs. But the number one factor? The anticipated cost of the Affordable Care Act.
Really? We can’t even keep our ice cream companies because of this stupid law? Even though Obamacare basically promised everyone free ice cream in the form of more affordable health insurance for all?
Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.
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