Posted on 04/14/2014 3:39:13 AM PDT by Kaslin
The announced departure of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius marks the end of a chapter of American history. Sibelius, aside from President Obama, has been the most prominent public face on the signature initiative of the Obama administration – the Affordable Health Care Act.
The question before Americans today is whether we are concluding the first chapter of a dream come true or whether this may be the beginning of the end of a nightmare.
I’m hoping Americans will wake up and see Obamacare for the nightmare it is.
Victory dances are taking place in the “dream come true” camp that over seven million have now signed up for Obamacare plans through federal and state insurance exchanges.
A lot of analysis is pouring forth about what this seven million actually means and to what extent this has anything to do with the claims of what Obamacare was supposed to do – deliver more affordable quality health care to more Americans.
But sometimes too much data and analysis gets you lost in in the forest.
The headline that should be flashing in front of us is that today, well into the sixth year of the Obama presidency, the American economy, once a dynamic engine of growth, is still is a wheezing, struggling, underperforming clunker of an economy.
We should be making a direct connection between this and the imposition of the Affordable Care Act on the American public.
Amid the celebration of the seven million plus have who have signed up, let’s not forget the Congressional Budget Office report in February projecting that Obamacare will shrink the American economy by 2.5 million jobs.
The specific factors CBO points to that will cause this shrinkage of jobs are the exchange subsidies, expansion of Medicaid, penalties on employers, and new taxes on labor.
We don’t have to sit and wonder about the reasonableness of CBO’s estimates. We’re already seeing these factors at work today.
Again, well into the sixth year of the Obama administration, unemployment is still at 6.7 percent, well above what has been historically considered the unemployment rate of a “full employment” economy – 5 percent.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the percentage of working age Americans who are working or actively seeking employment stands at 63.2 percent - “the lowest in three and half decades.”
According to Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellin, “While there has been steady progress, there is no doubt that the economy and the job market are not back to normal health.”
Now, certainly, the American economy is not all bad news.
But just look at where the incredible things are happening. They are happening in areas where individuals are left free to innovate. Where government is not controlling what businesses and individuals do.
The world is changing in front of us due to technological innovations that no one – certainly no government bureaucrat - could have dreamed of.
Technology is leading America to energy independence, something no one would have dreamed even 10 years ago.
When individuals are free to innovate and create, and when there are rewards to be gained commensurate with risks taken, miracles happen.
The same thing could be happening in health care.
But it’s not and won’t because government has taken it by the neck and is making this critical sector of our economy more like the US Postal Service than like Apple or Google or Amazon.com.
Making innovation and creativity impossible, penalizing business, taxing work in one fifth of the American economy is no formula for a great American future. Bureaucratization of health care is dragging down our whole economy.
Better, cheaper, more innovative health care won’t be delivered by government and politicians. It will be delivered by the American people if politicians will get out of the way and let them do it.
Let’s face it. Obamacare was a huge mistake. We should repeal and replace it.
How about repeal and restore to the way everything was?
Star Parker is only half right on this one.
Repeal It! Yes!
Replace it? How about we just get the government out of it completely? That is the better solution.
Repeal and replace Obamacare!
Hell, don’t repeal and replace it....KILL IT! Get government totally out of the healthcare business. As a matter of fact, get government out of ALL business.
Replace with what?
How do you require private insurance companies to reinstate the kind of coverage that they cancelled?
EVERY WORD OF IT should be on bumper stickers across this country. Had we just GAVE these indeterminate number of poor, downtrodden people with no insurance a minimal policy and left everyone else’s healthcare the same, we’d be in a much, much better position.
As it is, they have ruined healthcare for over 100 million, just to give a few some of us a ‘policy’ that, under a different name (Medicaid, or other welfare name) would still have the same result.
MASSIVE subsidies and gigantic additions to Medicaid are not ‘policies’ nor are they insurance; they are what they are - government charity using taxpayers’ money.
“we’d be in a much, much better position.”
I don’t think the idea was to improve things for the common people...(you and me.) One of the little talked about portions of the law is that some faceless government worker can designate you and me by name as not covered under any plan. So, they look on FR and see you’re outspoken. (They’ll just find you because I’ll be gone.) They cut your coverage. Imagine the coercive power that gives them.
There is only one way to get rid of odumbocare and that is by getting rid of the demodummies. I do not see that happening but can only hope there will be a major change made in the House and Senate which will lean them HEAVILY to the liberal side. Those who do get put in “control” will have to have the “passion” to make the changes however but I DO NOT see such passion in current “republicans”.
Maybe 5 million now have a policy.
So, as you point out, we have essentially destroyed the best health care system in the world to insure just 10% of those folks!
And, as far as I can tell, the GOP leadership is not campaigning on that fact, and, after 4 years of ObamaCare, the GOP still has no serious alternate plan!
Well, I can’t argue with that on the purpose thing. It was and is really all about power and control - and maintaining that control by giving segments of this population something for nothing just for their vote.
I agree. “Passion” as a Republican trait is nearly nonexistent, particularly with the RINOs up in DC and around the country.
The only “passion” they seem to have is in making their jobs easier by being the not-too-vocal opposition to Democrat government, willingly taking their second-tier power. Their only obstacle is having to go back home and having to lie about what they’ve done. It is why they hate conservatives so much because they make them feel pain back home.
One big problem is that the pre-ObamaCare was a looming disaster, too. There’s no way to address the problems with health care delivery in this country unless you’re willing to acknowledge that it is driven mainly by a demographic distortion in which: (1) most of the health care costs relate to older and less healthy people; and (2) there aren’t enough younger/healthier people who are rich and/or gullible enough to be duped into paying for those health care costs .
Repeal. Period.
The Federal government has no authorization for any of these social programs. These unauthorized activities are wrecking our economy.
Just repeal. While we’re at it there are a lot of other laws that need repealing like anyone over 10 pages long.
“I do not see that happening but can only hope there will be a major change made in the House and Senate which will lean them HEAVILY to the liberal side.
Opppps, I meant to say, the CONSERVATIVE side. My bad!
IF only 10% of the American population neecded health insurance, how much would it have cost of open FREE FEDERAL CLINICS all across the country & leave everyone else’s health insurance alone & in place???
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