On Monday, Steven Hayward (no relation) at Forbes predicted that “ObamaCare will be repealed well in advance of the 2014 elections.” He supposes it won’t be called “repeal,” but that’s what it will amount to in practice: Senate Democrats endangered for re-election will lead the charge for repeal perhaps as soon as January, after they get an earful over the Christmas break. They’ll call it “reform,” and clothe it in calls for delaying the individual mandate and allowing people and businesses to keep their existing health insurance policies. But it is probably too late to go back in many cases. With the political damage guaranteed to continue, the momentum toward repeal will be unstoppable. Democrats will not want to face the voters next November with the albatross of ObamaCare. Hayward got some static for making such a bold prediction, but just a few days later, here’s Dianne Feinstein doing exactly what he predicted, after getting the nod from Bill Clinton. And let’s make no bones about it: a bill that lets people keep their policies, like Landrieu’s or the bill Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) has introduced in the House, is tantamount to repeal, or more precisely, the first step in an inexorable process that will lead to effective repeal. ObamaCare cannot survive unless it forces millions of people into its badly-designed system. The lesson from all these anguished cries about lost insurance plans, and their expensive, INFERIOR replacements – is that ObamaCare cannot compete with the old policies. Very few people will choose Obama’s scheme voluntarily, and most of those who do are expensive, older, sicker loss leaders. The insurance companies participating in ObamaCare cannot survive with such a business model, especially if a “keep your plan if you like it” bill is accompanied by a delay in the individual mandate, due to the incredible and outrageous failure of the federal exchange website. An unnamed official with “knowledge of the project” just told the Washington Post that HealthCare.gov is “unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised,” which will mean another Obama lie is exposed, another flailing effort to drag this trillion-dollar disaster through a couple of news cycles falls apart, and more egg is deposited on the faces of everyone who imposed this nightmare on us. Couple this with the sensational stories about “limitless” security risks – and what appears to have been an orchestrated effort to keep them secret from both the American people and the HealthCare.gov project managers – and full repeal of ObamaCare increasingly becomes the “commonsense” reform we need, to borrow a word from one of the very nervous Democrats who sees pitchforks and torches glittering in the night. Even if the effort to fix the $500 million pile of garbage deposited by Obama’s cronies is eventually successful, a couple of stories about hacking and identity theft will finish off whatever remains of the web-savvy Young Invincibles’ desire to use the system and queue up for their fleecing. It’s absurd – absolutely daft – to keep this misbegotten monstrosity on life support for another day. It didn’t work, Democrats. Let it go. Update: Here’s Ted Cruz on “Fox and Friends,” ably making the same points about repeal. ”Stopping ObamaCare is the height of pragmatism,” said the Senator. ”We need to stop it and start over, because it isn’t working.” (Hat tip: The Right Scoop.) ↵ Use original player Sen. Ted Cruz on Fox and Friends By SenTedCruz i Cruz thinks Bill Clinton threw Obama under the bus yesterday to help Hillary distance herself from the ObamaCare disaster, which is probably going to be a tough sell, given her longstanding association with even more wrongheaded “reform” ideas. Then again, Democrats have always relied upon the very short memories of their voters. Whatever Bill Clinton’s motivations were, it seems inevitable that a lot of Democrats will receive precisely the kind of “signal” from his action (and now Feinstein’s defection) that Cruz talks about. The willingness of the Democrat Party to defend ObamaCare to the death is rapidly degrading. Update: Erick Erickson makes the point that if Republicans push Rep. Upton’s “keep your plan” bill through in the House, the odious Harry Reid will pull a little bait-and-switch in the Senate, and we’ll end up with Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu’s bill – which is unacceptably coercive toward insurance companies, and would give Landrieu undeserved political cover. I fully agree with the latter point. All Democrat bills to “fix” ObamaCare should be 100 percent dead-duck non-starters, because as Barack Obama famously put it once upon a time, the people who created this mess shouldn’t do a lot of talking right now. As to the former, Erick is right about the unacceptable betrayal of free-market conservative principles in forcing insurance companies to issue policies that no longer make business sense, thanks to ObamaCare mandates. And Republicans really do not want their fingerprints on this disaster. I think delaying the individual mandate is just the right thing to do, and failing to get Republican cards on that table would only come back to haunt them later, when Democrats portray them as heartless for forcing people to pay a tax/penalty they couldn’t possibly avoid. But the GOP should have nothing to do with “fixing” this disaster. Repeal is the path, the only “common sense reform” America needs. Having said that, I tend to think a “fix” like Landrieu’s would only accelerate the death spiral that leads to inevitable repeal.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:54:43 +0000
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