Why do I discount/ignore every story that says “This is what will kill Obamacare?”
Because, as one of my commenters just said:
by years end the ACA will be so entrenched that it won’t be able to be removed.
The goal of the left is simply to keep Obamacare, even if it is just in name, as a part of the Federal Government, providing “healthcare” to one or more people who can be claimed to be victims. They only need to hang on, just barely, and they will have a permanent huge bureaucracy that, like every federal government program, will grow over time. Success does not matter, only survival.
NOTHING will kill Obamacare other than full legislative repeal and dismantling of every supporting organization, which requires a LOT of people becoming unemployed. You and I know how impossible that actually is. Thus, Obamacare will remain, at best, only mostly dead.
No “bad result” or horrifying statistic will ever persuade any legislators or lobbyists on the left to do anything other than KEEP MOVING FORWARD. They will not be persuaded by failure at all. The delays are merely to make it more palatable and inevitable. The facts do not matter. The CBO report does not matter. Actual costs do not matter. Not to the leftists. Not to the people in the federal government.
So, do we simply give up and accept that America will be like the UK, with our NHS zombie medical system? Of course not. We’re America, dammit, we don’t do things like everybody else, that’s why we are the best! Obamacare will never die, and that’s ok. Here’s why:
Obamacare’s huge mistake is that it was too much too fast. Too much change, too much that violated the laws of human nature, too much cronyism, corruption, and stupidity. It could not and did not just happen smoothly to a passive and compliant populace.
The delays and exemptions (illegal though they are) are actually the left doing what they need to do to keep the dream alive, keep the departments in place, keep the funding, keep the rules-making bodies, keep the conversation going – to hang on by their fingernails. There are plenty of true believers out there to help them. They comment on my G+ posts all the time. Ignore them all.
The end result of Obamacare is that it will be, as all socialized medicine is, the lower tier of medical care. Go ahead, look around, ALL socialized medicine results in a two tier system, those who participate in it, and those who can afford to NOT participate in it. The only difference is the income level at which people are able to opt out, and that is kind of related to the homgeneity and general level of compliance of the population.
I remain quite optimistic about America’s future, and our ability to find a way around this disastrous legislation. That’s because I have faith in the American people, the American dream, and the brilliance of the individual.
Individuals will do what they need to do in order to retain control over their own lives, and to make choices for themselves. Americans do not simply lay back and take it, we just don’t. Never have, never will.
We have the seeds, and actually, quite healthy sprouts, of the worlds best Free Market Health Care system already in place. Consumerism and the profit motive will ensure that here in America, our two-tier health system has a dividing line far lower than in most other nations. In some countries, nearly everyone uses government doctors, and only the super-rich use the cash system. For Canadians, even the middle class can use the cash system by coming over to America. I believe that here in America, we’ll have a two-tier system with a dividing line not much above the poverty level. Yes, we are THAT good.
I live in a city with a very large population of illegal aliens, and a very large service economy. That’s a lot of people who were really never in the 20th century employer-provided health insurance market. We have TONS of quick care clinics, all over the place. They compete against one another to provide fast, effective, low cost health care on a cash basis, and some of them take insurance as well. The drugstores will provide you with their own brand of “prescription insurance” if you don’t have your own, so that you can get your medicines there.
I know, I was a cash patient for several years, needing biannual blood tests and montly prescriptions. I never had to make an appointment, paying cash was fast, cheap. My medical care was great. The free market has already taken over the “everyday basic” stuff, quite effectively. The free market also handles cosmetic surgery quite well – costs keep coming down and technology improves – just the same way things work in other industries.
Once insurance companies give up on Obamacare and come up with un-insurance plans, and clinics and doctors figure out a way around Obamacare – they will be competing for the business of all 300 million of us.
It will be chaos for a few years, and legislatively we have to keep fighting to get as much of Obamacare overturned as we can. However, American ingenuity will figure out how to work around all of it. Obamacare’s extreme overreach means that profit-minded organizations will figure out workarounds very quickly.
Obamacare will NOT result in “single payer for America”, it will bring back Individual Choice and Control over our own bodies. And it’s gonna be fun to watch. Just don’t get sidetracked by the true believers. Just as we have to work around the bad laws, walk around the true believers, just walk on by, pay them no mind. Don’t let them slow you down.