By David Harsanyi
Tuesday, October 04, 2016
When The New York
Times tells you Obamacare is “ailing” and must change to survive, rest
assured that the law is in serious trouble.
Then again, people who read The New York Times might be under the impression the only way to
fix a collapsing state-run program is to pass another, more intrusive state-run
program — in this case, a “public option.”
In truth, it was probably something of a shock to most Times readers that the Affordable Care
Act had struggled at all. For years, left-wing punditry has been churning our
prodigious quantities of Obamacare fanfic, praising and hailing every ACA
stumble as another unrealized measure of success. They made this denial loop
possible by reframing Obamacare’s expectations and reimagining its purpose.
Here’s something worth remembering: If we evaluate
Obamacare using the parameters Democrats themselves laid out when campaigning
and passing the historically partisan reform, we have no choice but to view it
as a debacle.
Of course, there’s the obvious instances of outright
falsehoods: take Obama’s “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to
keep your health-care plan.” Millions of Americans have been forced off their
insurance plans, no matter how much they liked them.
The president also assured Americans that Obamacare would
lower premiums for the typical family by $2,500. Instead, average premiums have
gone up by more than $3,700. Colorado, for instance, expects health-insurance
rates to jump 20 percent on average for individual buyers next year alone. All
those explainers, skewed charts, and pretend projections were wrong.
Obama also pledged that once state marketplaces were
“fully implemented” Americans would be able to buy insurance at the same “good
rates” as “an employee at a big company can get right now — which means your
premiums will go down.” They haven’t.
Not only have rates risen, but there has been an exodus of insurance
providers, unable to compete even in these contrived and subsidized exchanges.
Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a study that estimates 664 counties
across the country will feature only a single insurer on Obamacare exchanges in
2017. In 2016, it was 215. Four states will have only one Obamacare insurer
(update: add
another one). Rather than create competition, this experiment has only
strengthened in-state insurance cartels.
Obama promised that Obamacare wouldn’t add a penny to the
deficit and would cost less than a trillion dollars (remember the ten years
taxation for the eight years of ACA?). Meanwhile, Obama has spent billions of
health-care dollars — without any congressional authority — to bail out his
struggling program.
Perhaps the only real achievement Obama and his allies
can dependably point to is the increase in insured Americans. When we consider
government penalizes you for failing to buy insurance, it’s hardly a surprise.
It’s tantamount to bragging about increasing military recruitment numbers after
passing a draft. Although Democrats do seem perversely satisfied with idea of
using state force as a marketing tool.
Obamacare was ostensibly about controlling greedy
insurance companies (who wrote most the cronyistic bill in the first place) and
“bending the cost curve.” In reality, Democrats have used Obamacare as a tool
for social engineering and expanding the welfare state. As Obamacare falls apart, Democrats now turn
to the “public option” — a state-run program — because incrementalism is what
they always do.
Here’s how the Times
lays it out:
The departing president, the woman
who seeks to replace him and nearly one-third of the Senate have endorsed a new
government-sponsored health plan, the so-called public option, to give
consumers an additional choice.
Well, as impressive as that sounds, it’s not really a new
plan. Six years ago, before the Democratic Party had fully completed its
hard-left turn, its moderates rejected the “public option.” One of the
prevailing myths of the Obamacare battle was that the president had attempted
to negotiate with the GOP in good faith. Every concession that was offered was
meant to entice moderate Democrats to vote for the bill, because every last one
of them was needed to pass it.
In this
sycophantic interview with New York
magazine, Obama argues that moderate Dems who supported his bill were being
brave. Hardly. At the time, Red State Democrats were sold on the idea of
Obamacare becoming popular once it passed. Yet, despite repeated assurances
from politicians and pundits, Obamacare is still just as unpopular in polls. By
passing a national reform without any buy-in from half the country, Democrats
destroyed their majority and made it impossible to move any meaningful domestic
legislation for the rest of Obama’s presidency.
Liberals like to mock Republicans for being obsessed with
overturning Obamacare. Now that it’s useful, though, be prepared for lots of
conversations about the future of the bill. About GOP obstructionism. About how
conservatives hate sick women and children. Etc. But if Republicans capitulate
and help “fix” Obamacare, either through another taxpayer-funded insurance
bailout or a “public option,” they will become co-owners of a disaster.
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley introduced a Senate resolution for
the “public option,” claiming it “is critical to bringing more competition and
accountability to the insurance market.” Never in the history of mankind has a
state-run entity in a private marketplace ever created more competitiveness or
accountability. This is a debate conservatives should welcome. Because today we
might be talking beauty queens and a billionaire’s 20-year-old tax return, but
after the election, the GOP has a chance to effectively finish off Obamacare.
They should take it.
No comments:
Post a Comment