By Shawn Mitchell
Monday, March 03, 2014
We are letting him get away with it. No action by the
federal government in our lifetime, maybe ever, caused as much instant
disruption, expense, uncertainty, fear, and threat to real health—while
demonstrating astonishing incompetence and lack of planning—as the advent of
the "Affordable Care Act."
The law was sold on a foundation and core of direct,
deliberate lie. Its architects intended to sever people from their plans and
doctors; they intended to make most pay more so a few could pay less; they
designed a system to herd masses toward the exchanges and Medicaid. Every
serious person knows it. Now, instead of saving average families $2,500, it’s
costing virtually all insured Americans much more. Many Americans are left
struggling to replace their coverage.
Having sawed off the branch of the coverage of millions,
it’s not clear whether the law actually positioned a net to catch their fall.
Problems accessing healthcare.gov are a tired joke by now. Less reported is
that many who think they signed up, might as well have played a video game,
having committed their clicks, selections, identities, and personal information
to a façade without a back-end, landing in a dangerously hackable pile of
inconsequence.
Meanwhile, the accounts are piling up of seriously ill Americans
who had good coverage and good treatment who have lost it. Many literally fear
for their lives. The president doesn’t deign to comment on their plight while
his bagman in the Senate implies they’re liars. Operatives scramble to silence
their accounts.
No one knows where this is going; what will happen. This
year many millions more will be swept from employer based plans and find
themselves in the same capsizing boat. Scratch that—not quite this year. The
president dispensed with three branches as he sponsored, passed and signed an
amendment to the law, to kick the employer devastation past the next election
for some employers if they take a vow of loyal silence against blaming
Obamacare for their employment decisions.
That was the latest in a train of abuses. The president
has selectively delayed, distorted, or ignored so much of the law he rammed
through by sham procedures and a party line vote that it’s impossible to say
whether or how the remaining pieces fit together. The only thing that’s sure is
that anything that threatens the president’s party with political damage will
by misrepresented, covered up, or kicked down the road.
What has happened to the American spirit of independence
and vigilance of government? This administration deliberately disrupted
American life like nothing since WWII. When Congress passed a pharmaceutical
plan for seniors in 1988 that made many pay more, they rose in anger and mobbed
a fleeing Dan Rostenkowski. Congress quickly repealed its mistake. When LBJ
bungled he Vietnam War, his own party rose up and served eviction notice on one
of the most transformative presidents in history.
Yet today, we sleepwalk through an earthquake, discussing
pros and cons, listening to straight face defenses of the president’s initiative,
watching post-modern hacks for total government argue to redefine “keep your
plan” “keep your doctor” and “cancelled plan.” By the account of these zombies,
the president and his backers told the truth and now it’s his critics who are
lying. Anger at what he’s done to our nation is unenlightened, uncivil, and
racist, they intone.
Rubbish, I say. If anything the response has been too
docile, too deferential to lies and the defenders of lies. He goes about his
methodical agenda transforming America by executive order, and barely reported
Department programs, unleashing his enforcers on anyone whose criticism rises
to the national radar, while we’re left picking up the pieces of what he’s done
to jobs, growth, opportunity, and now our individual physical safety nets.
We’re too scared and shell shocked to rise up and chase his limousine like the
spirited seniors just 25 years ago.
America is softening and stumbling. It should be
difficult for the Chief Executive and Chief Architect of this chaos to find an
audience anywhere that doesn’t shout, challenge, question, and resist his
overreach. But we’re either too stunned to move, too afraid of the names his
guard dogs would call us, or maybe we fear a knock on the door from federal
regulators.
May Providence breathe new life into the people of
America. If not, Obama gets his transformation.
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