Obama-care causes a national dizziness
Published September 15, 2013
Editorial by Jacksonville Daily News, September 11, 2013.
The back-and-forth over the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obama-care, has gotten so divorced from reality that it’s hard to tell what supporters or opponents truly believe.
It’s telling that new problems with or changes to Obama-care seem to crop up every day. The law is anti-business; rations medical care; could promote abuses; and raises costs as it cuts payments to providers.
For the public, all this creates a kind of information vertigo. It’s often impossible to determine where truth ends and gamesmanship begins. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week shows that Americans are confused by all the changes to Obama-care. About half (51 percent) say they don’t have enough information about the healthcare law to understand how it affects them. Negative views of Obama-care (42 percent) run higher than favorable views (37 percent).
But health care for millions of Americans should be more than a political game. It has real consequences, not only in terms of medical coverage for those who don’t have it but economic security for all Americans. There are major concerns about the potential costs of the program to U.S. taxpayers as well as worries about the impact on businesses, particularly small businesses.
The looming deadline is Oct. 1, the scheduled opening of regional exchanges through which people can buy health insurance if they are not covered by their employer.
This is where conservative Republicans in Congress have drawn their line in the sand with threats to defund Obama-care. It’s also exposed a line of contention between conservative and more moderate Republicans.
Among those caught in the crossfire is North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr of Winston-Salem. The Baltimore Sun reports that Burr told a reporter last month that threatening to shut down the federal government unless Congress agrees to defund Obama-care was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”
Burr seems unaware that the Obama administration has already unilaterally cancelled, postponed and defunded numerous provisions of what is ostensibly the law; or that defunding the rest of Obama-care in no way will necessarily shut-down the federal government — that’s a decision that Obama would make.
Government at all levels increasingly appears like a dysfunctional family trapped inside the same house for a holiday that never ends. Many of the problems with the Affordable Care Act stem from not only the way it was passed and then rewritten by the Supreme Court but the subsequent imperial way in which the administration has made changes to the statute as it’s written without any authority to do so.
Is there no one in Starnesville-on-the-Potomac with enough honesty and courage to call a halt to the bickering and outline something everyone can live with before the entire country resembles remnants of the 20th Century Motor Company of “Atlas Shrugged”?
September 16, 2013 at 8:17 am
TP Wohlford says:
Here's the deal... in November 2008, the day after the election, the Congress woke up to the fact that newly elected Barry Obama -- the guy who was barely there before he started running for President -- had promised "My Plan" form of health care reform.
The trouble, of course, is that "My Plan" was simply a load of platitudes and good wishes. Obama was promising the sun, the moon, the stars, seemingly believing this messiah thing, that his mere presence fixed things. However, the Senate leadership had no ideas on how to do this. Old ideas, yes, but nothing approaching what Obama was talking about.
Worse yet, Senator Kennedy, who championed national health care since the Carter years, was gravely ill. Senator Byrd wasn't doing well either. Dodd was crippled by scandal. Clinton and Biden were now in the White House. In other words, the new Senate Dem "A" team was made up of the old "B" team. You want to know why the Congress won't stop the bickering? Because they are still lead by this "B" team!
Anyway, Dems in the Senate doesn't care to revisit this bill, remembering the angry protesters back home during its passage. They remember promising legislators in both chambers whose career was ended by angry voters over this issue. Besides, the know that Obama -- the lightweight Senate back bencher who started this thing -- will simply veto any repeal.
