This weeks column.... When Politics Trump Civics One of the big issues in the 2008 presidential race was access to healthcare, or by the time the progressives won the election and began working on the law, access to healthcare through health insurance that spreads the wealth. For the next two years Democrats enjoyed full control of both Houses of Congress and the White House. With that kind of control, they knew they could pass historic legislation that would completely transform America from a capitalist, market-based economy to a government-controlled economy. The next brick in the wall of that transformation was takeover of the healthcare sector. Progressives have been working on the takeover since FDR’s creation of Social Security. Then LBJ created Medicare and Medicaid with all kinds of promises regarding costs and benefits. Today, cost projections from the 1960s are laughable, and these three programs make up more than 42 percent of the federal budget. Of course Democrats in congress did not write the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Lobbyists and special interest groups wrote their own special parts of the law and Democrats took those parts along with plenty of money under the table and mixed the parts into the 2,300-page law. Not only did Democrats not write the law, but they also did not read the law. Rhetorical wars from 2009 through 2010 were little more than kabuki theater with progressives shaming Republicans for being so hard-hearted and not wanting any of the 30 to 45 million poor Americans to have access to healthcare. Republicans tried to counter by agreeing with popular progressive talking points, but the mainstream media was lockstep with progressives and covered up those points of agreement. With all the attention focused on the 30 or so million Americans who couldn’t afford health insurance, few even thought about how a new law might affect those who already liked the coverage they had. President Obama famously touted over and over again that those who liked their plans could keep them, and those who liked their doctors could keep them…PERIOD. I have a feeling that last word was not on his teleprompter. He just improvised to make his point more presidential. Obamacare was passed through both Houses with highly questionable tactics by the slimmest of Democratic votes. No Republicans supported the bill. Everything was going swimmingly for the Democrats until the big rollout of Healthcare.gov, which was more of a flop out. Progressives pretended glitches caused problems, and too many eager customers crashed the system. Finally, progressives promised to fix the website that had been under construction for more than three years in a mere month, and Kool Aid drinkers all cheered! Yaaaaaa! They’ll fix Healthcare.gov and we’ll all live happily ever after! Then insurance companies began following the law and sending out millions of cancellation notices to families whose policies were below standards required by Obamacare…more than 5 million and counting. Last week President Obama fixed that problem by declaring insurance companies did not have to follow the law, because he said so, and he’s the president so he can make any changes any time he wants. Obama told those nasty mean old insurance companies they didn’t have to follow the law in Obamacare and could just send out new letters telling those policy holders they could have their cancelled policies back if they wanted them. I believe there is a civics lesson in here somewhere.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:00:36 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015