By Crystal Wright
Friday, October 25, 2013
Well, well, well. When Republicans tried to delay the
Obamacare individual mandate during the government shutdown, Democrats and
President Barack Obama called them “meanies” and obstructionists. But when the
Obama administration quietly had the Department of Health and Human Services
announce Wednesday night it would extend the deadline for individuals to enroll
in Obamacare, the media yawned as if to say “No, Big Deal.”
In fact, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank turned to
mocking House Republicans for their persistence in pointing out the multitude
of problems since the law’s October 1 rollout. Even Democrats are shaking their
heads at the mess. Yet Milbank haughtily writes in his bold liberal tone,
“Okay, okay we get it: Republicans still don’t like the healthcare-law. But
can’t they talk about anything else?”
Actually Dana, we can’t because this nearly $3 trillion Affordable
Care Act, which will add $1 trillion to our debt over 10 years, in all its
glitch filled glory is giving Republicans and even some Democrats enough to
talk about for the next 10 years. And talk they should. The Obamacare rollout
has more glitches in its software than a hooker has runs in her panty hose.
Earlier this week Milbank wrote: “Had the country not
been distracted by the shutdown and debt standoff, the botched rollout would
have been a major story.” But it’s one he and his mainstream media cohorts will
continue to give less coverage to and won’t cover objectively when they do.
The White House claims it delayed the deadline by six
weeks to March 31, 2014 because Americans were confused by the different
deadlines for the law’s implementation. Indeed, what people are confused by was
a website they either couldn’t access, spit out error messages, wrong
information on premium coverage and subsidies or just plain crashed. It looks
every bit like the Obama administration delayed the enrollment deadline because
it knows it has a $600 million lemon of a website on its hands that can’t
enroll people in Obama’s legacy legislation. This doesn’t say much for what’s
shaping up to be an inglorious administration for the country’s first black
president.
Of course, the Obama White House is vehemently denying
the delay is linked to the website problems and the news media is going right
along with it. Throughout the two week government shutdown, Obama vilified
Republicans, literally skewered them in the court of public opinion, for trying
to delay implementation of Obamacare. Yet after Obama gets everything he wants
in the shutdown and debt ceiling standoff with no Obamacare strings attached,
he turns around and does exactly what House Republicans demanded. He delays the
individual mandate and watch this won’t be the only delay.
I said repeatedly House Speaker John Boehner’s strategy
of delaying the individual mandate for a year was good one but it got lost in a
small band of House Republicans’ push for defunding Obamacare, led by their
Pied Piper Senator Ted Cruz . Republicans need to hammer away at Obama, daily,
for stealing their idea of delaying the individual mandate. Speaker Boehner and
the rest of the House GOP leadership also need to remind the American people
this delay along with many others like the White House delaying the employer
mandate for a year, which requires businesses to provide coverage employees,
indicates the president himself realizes Obamacare isn’t working!
Equally amusing is Democrats lecturing Republicans saying
they should help Obama fix the problems with the law’s rollout. Why on earth
would the GOP help fix Obamacare? In 2010 then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed the bill without a single Republican
vote. Democrats own Obamacare-- all 11 billion words of the regulation. (The US
Constitution is comprised of a mere 4500 words.) Democrats should try to fix it
themselves before it literally crashes under its own bad weight of glitches.
But with each passing day Obamacare looks too broken to fix. You can’t put
lipstick or another $1 trillion on this dying pig.
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