Noemie Emery writes in the Washington Examiner that — despite defenders’ protests to the contrary — the Affordable Care Act is not the same as Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, “bills that were launched amid opposition and discord, but in time were accepted and loved.”
[F]rom the beginning, this has been different in three signal ways that have been self-destructive, the last of which may be the worst.
The first is the fact that previously mentioned programs were simple: the civil and voting rights acts stopped abuses and the others involved simple transfers of money. Obamacare is an attempt to manage and regulate millions of private transactions, creating a cascade of panicky “fixes” that create more complications (and lawsuits) and have ripple effects on the larger economy.
The second is that it’s churning out losers who outnumber the winners, and soon, if it effects those whose health care comes from small businesses, will number a great many more. The other four helped millions at a minimal cost to the public in general. Au contraire, health care is wreaking havoc upon millions just to give less than was hoped to a much smaller number. This is the marker for unviability.
And then, we come to point three. Fans of the law say it was passed fair and square by both houses of Congress, declared constitutional by the high court of the country and reaffirmed by President Obama’s election in 2012. Of these things, only the second is accurate, as polls now make clear that Obama would not have won in 2012 had people known what was in his pet project — and pains were taken to ensure this was so.
The bill was designed so as not to unfold for three years after passage, and news of its contents was largely suppressed. As the Washington Post reported Dec. 14, key parts of the plan were delayed for a year for political reasons, so no word of them would get out to the public until the election was over. (Can’t let the voters know what they’re voting on.) And then there’s the fact that Obama lied at least 29 times when he told the people they could keep their plans and their doctors, which he certainly knew wasn’t true.
