Saturday, March 29, 2014
Obamacare - Not Just Health Care But American Values Are at Stake
The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, may be on the books as a law since 2010 and it may be rolling out across the United States, but public support for President Barack Obama's health care law has fallen to its lowest level since passage of the landmark legislation four years ago, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. Only 26% favor Obamacare, but a mere 13% think it will be repealed. A narrow majority expects the law to be further implemented with minor changes, or as passed. That is the crux of the problem. Obamacare is vehemently disliked but it marches on like a horde of killer ants sweeping across a tropical forest floor. As Gwen Sliger of Dallas told the AP : "Repealing a law after it has been passed is pretty impossible. At this point, I don't see that happening." Her opinion reflects the national mood. Although a Democrat, Sliger is strongly opposed to Obamacare But she thinks it is here to stay. And she echoes the feeling of a majority of Americans when she says that she likes the idea that a person cannot be refused coverage for a pre-existing condition, but does not like the fact that under Obamacare you can be fined for not having coverage. The AP-GfK poll was taken before last Thursday's announcement by the White House that new health insurance markets have surpassed the goal of 6 million sign-ups, so the potential impact of that news on public opinion is not reflected in the poll. Open enrollment season began with a dysfunctional HealthCare.gov website last October 1 but will end Monday on a seemingly more positive note. The exchanges offer subsidized private coverage to people without a plan on the job. Only 5% of the poll respondents think the Obamacare rollout has gone very or extremely well, but the number who think it has gone at least somewhat well has improved from 12% in December to 26% now. The downside - in families where members have tried to use the exchanges to sign up for health insurance, 59% say there have been problems in using the website. This is clearly reflected in the leaked news this week that Maryland is scraping its exchange website modeled on the federal website and will probably purchase the website built and used by Connecticut, seen as the best exchange website in the US. A West Virginian who strongly opposes Obamacare told AP : "I think it's much too big a thing for the country to be taking on....The federal bureauceacy just seems too strong, it's like an anaconda." A Florida factory superviser whose two adult sons tried to buy health insurance on the exchanges found it too expensive for them to purchase. The mother supported President Clinton, but said the economy has gone sour for working people under Obama. "Everything is so expensive, not just health care," she said. In April 2010, just after the bill was passed, 50% of Americans said they were opposed to it, while 39% were in favor, and 10% had no opinion. Now, in March 2014, just 26% say they are in favor, a drop of 13 percentage points, and 43% say they are opposed, a drop of 7 percentage points since that poll four years ago. But the number who neither support nor oppose the law has tripled, to 30%. This response is not significantly different from the 27% registered in January and last December. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Obamacare may have registered the 6 million it set as the goal for the first annual enrollment period ending on Monday, 31 March. But, the enrollees, as best we can tell from the insurance industry because the Obama administration will not give any enrollee detail, are older and signing up for the cheapest plans. These two demographic points mean that the prices for everyone will undoubtedly rise in 2015. And, Americans - while deeply dissatisfied with Obamacare's interference with their choice of doctors and hospitals and medicines and treatments - are becoming pessimistic that the mess that is Obamacare will ever be repealed. This means that the mid-term 2014 congressional elections are critically important. November's elections will be possibly the last chance Americans have to overturn Obamacare - by voting for Republicans for both the House and Senate. The Democrat argument that there will still be the Obama presidential veto is not valid. A GOP House and Senate can and will halt Obamacare funding and deal with the uninsured - both poor and with pre-existing conditions. Nothing - no principle of right, moderate or left GOP groups - can be allowed to strip votes away from Republican candidates committed to abolishing Obamacare. It may seem that a health care law does not warrant such unfailing commitment. But in the case of Obamacare, it is not just health care but the future of America that is at stake -- an America built on the principles of personal freedom, liberty to be free of cradle-to-grave socialist government and the principle that 1/6 of the American economy should respond to competitive market forces instead of bureaucratic nanny-state agendas.
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Obamacare isn't and never was intended to be about health care. It's about outright control of our privacy and 1/6th of the economy.
ReplyDeleteEnough were duped into believing that lair and (then) Speaker Pelosi (that we had to pas the bill to find out what was in it) rantings. Well the SCOTUS made the Act law and boy did we learn what was in it. I am surprised that there isn't impeachment over Obamacare?Affordable Care Act
I wish Obama and his care would simply go away...
ReplyDeleteYou, I, and everyone else if they are honest to themselves. But that is not about to happen. He even plans (as the story goes) to reside in Washington DC after 2016. This is something NO other x-president has ever done. What's he up to ?
DeleteTwo summers ago a poll conducted by Democratic strategists James Carville (D) and Stan Greenberg (D) found that 55 percent of registered voters nationwide believed the term socialist accurately applied to Obama. In fact 33 percent of respondents -- a third of all registered voters in the nation -- believed the term applied to Obama "very well."
ReplyDeleteMore recently a Pew Center (R) survey on some of our nation's most commonly used ideological labels revealed that 60 percent of Americans have a negative impression of the word "socialism." Certainly there is a compelling case to be made that Obama is a socialist in the contemporary sense -- much like the French Socialists, who are proposing massive tax hikes on the wealthy after securing the presidency and majorities in France's Sénat and Assemblée Nationale.
What President Obama has been pushing for via his Obamacare/Affordable Care Act, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.
So if Obama isn't a socialist, what is he? Economically speaking it's far more accurate to say that he is a fascist -- a supporter of dirigisme (sp), in which government manages the economy through central planning, not collective ownership. When business was good, profit remained to private initiative. However when downturns came (as they inevitably do), the government added the loss to the taxpayer's burden. Profit is private and individual, while loss is public and social.
So is Obama's brand of 21st century socialism/ nouveau fascism really "more insidious" than pure socialism, as Thomas Sowell suggests? Yes, because unlike socialism - the public sector never takes a loss, as the recent bureaucratic bailouts made clear.
And this is the direct path that Obamacare was intended to … control of the economy, any profit can stay in the community, and ant loss will be made up via higher insurance rates and less services
The term “administrative state” or “regulatory state” is used frequently, often erroneously. Broadly speaking, the term “administrative state” describes our modern situation, in which the authority to make public policy is unlimited, centralized, and delegated to unelected administrators. During the last 100 or so years, our government has been in transformation from a limited, constitutional, federal republic to a centralized administrative state that exists outside the structure of our Constitution and exercises nearly unlimited power. This administrative state has been constructed as a result of a massive expansion of the national government’s power.
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest long-term challenges facing the United States is the restoration of limited constitutional government. Vital to that objective, and an essential aspect of changing America’s course, is the undoing of the administrative state that so threatens our self-governing republic.
Fundamental to the idea of American constitutionalism are the concepts of representation, the rule of law, and the separation of powers. The administrative state does damage to all of these principles.
When Nancy Pelosi famously declared that we would have to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as “Obamacare”) so that we could find out what is in it, she was not discussing to the length of the bill. Rather, she was referring to the fact that most of the laws—such as the infamous Health and Human Services (HHS) requirement that all insurance providers cover contraception, abortions, and sterilization—would be made by HHS, not found in the statute that Congress was passing.
Bureaucrats regularly make exemptions to the regulations that they create. By its own count in January 2012, HHS had already granted over 1,700 waivers from its own regulations under Obamacare (current numbers are surprisingly not available via normal methods).Bureaucrats therefore write the laws and, because they execute them, are also able to exempt politically powerful groups and industries from those same laws. This violates the idea that we are all to be treated equally under the law, rich and poor, powerful and weak alike.
Folks, we do not have to abandon our cherished ideals simply because current life is complex. In fact, sticking to our principles will help us improve regulation from the unfortunate condition that it is in today.
I want to be free. I don't want to labor for the state. I want to take care of my children. Social Security is the most successful social welfare program for a simple reason … people are basically paying for themselves. Medicare is a problem because people are not paying for themselves. When we force people to do things for themselves, shockingly they tend to try harder.
ReplyDeleteIf people cannot truly provide for themselves we, as citizens, understand we have a certain responsibility to them. This responsibility does not extend to a point where we are bringing down all of society to care for these people. That's just stupid because if we think this through, we see that, as we bring society down, our ability to care for the sick and disabled shrinks. Since it's an absolute economic law that taking money from an activity that produces something and handing it to something that does not produce makes us all that much poorer it is absolutely certain that these actions MUST be limited to the absolute minimum. When was care for the elderly shifted to the responsibility of Washington DC from the states, communities, and family? That’s how it used to be and it work pretty well. Maybe the care was better given and received!
ReplyDeleteSenator Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed that the destruction of black families and culture … "The issue of welfare is the issue of dependency.” That is, being dependent fosters a helplessness that damages family and society. And today we have more people of all races that are helpless and depend on one or more entitlement programs to survive (and some survive quiet well). This trend towards the nanny state and socialism has progressed past the tipping point and will inevitably lead to major changes and possibly the end of the US as we know it today, some believe.
The society that used to make receiving welfare something to be avoided now punishes and belittles those who actually pay for all those benefits. And how will this massive spending ever be stopped if more and more people would rather get Obamacare, disability and food stamps than live in a free society where you have to work to make it? As Chris Christie once told some taxpayers in New Jersey regarding promises made by politicians in the past: "They lied to you". Just as they have lied to you about Obamacare.
Obamacare is the tip of an Iceberg that has 90% of its structure out of the understanding of most – even most politicians? Obamacare is the devil in disguise.
When the choice of physician, choice of hospital, choice of program of care, choice of changing physician is out of reach, choice of buying or not buying Health Insurance, choice of keeping a well-structured life just the way it was built then what else can we expect except a drastic change in our personal expectations of the American Values.
ReplyDeleteCertainly the American Value system is in danger of becoming as extinct as the Dinosaur’s. I’m not sure that we can really go back to what we had before Obama … maybe the best that can be done is to halt the downward slide into a socialistic state here and now.