Speaker of the House John Boehner may have raised some eyebrows when he appeared to concede that “Obamacare is the law of the land,” virtually admitting that he would make no special effort to repeal in toto the Affordable Care Act. He may have seen it as a losing issue after President Obama and Democratic senators’ victories on November 6th.
He may be right — insofar as introducing legislation in the House to repeal it is a waste of time. Republican Representatives can pass a repeal bill every day of the week, but there is absolutely no way it would make it past the senate; and even if, by some miracle, it did, there is no way President Obama would allow his signature achievement to be killed by a simple majority.
Boehner emphasized that “full repeal” remains the goal of Republicans, and that they would try to repeal increments of the Act in coming sessions — but it would be fruitless, not to mention a political debit, to theatrize their majority by continuing to make full repeal a central and perpetual issue.
However, that is no reason to forget about Obamacare.
[1]As more and more of the law is implemented, more and more businesses are going to stand still or retract. Employers are dropping employees and cutting employee hours to avoid federal thresholds and to keep costs and overhead down. Health care costs are still rising; and as more and more people are covered for pre-existing conditions, that cost will continue to rise. Even when everyone has insurance, the cost will not be defrayed because more and more people will want to get “their money’s worth” out of their policy.
The full implementation of the Affordable Care Act needs to be a major discussion in the coming months and years, especially in 2014 when every Democratic senator elected in 2008 on the coat-tails of Barack Obama may be branded as the deciding vote to corporatize — with government sanction and force — the mandatory use of seventeen hundredths of private property. Here’s a sample of what we have to look forward to:
2013
- Contributions over $2,500 per year to a health Flexible Spending Account will now be taxed.
- Medical equipment — including defibrillators — will have an excise tax of 2.3% added on to it, the cost of which will simply be passed on to the ultimate consumer (the patient).
- Health care cost must surpass 10% of the gross adjusted income in order to claim an itemized deduction (this actually shouldn’t be a problem since health care costs per person continue to rise much faster than the rise in income per person…).
2014
- Insurance companies will be prohibited from imposing limits on annual coverage. Patients will no longer consider it prudent to use their policies discerningly, since their coverage is now virtually unlimited.
- Businesses — if they exceed 50 full-time employees — will be required to provide “an acceptable level” of health insurance coverage, else pay a penalty. Expect layoffs, more employees’ hours to be reduced below 30 hours per week, and salaries to drop to compensate for the increase in benefit cost.
- Finally, 310 Million individuals — simply by virtue of their existence — will be required to engage in commerce with, and to dispense their own property to, private corporations, in order to obtain a service that 279 lawmakers and 1 executive have determined to be so important that these 310 Million individuals may not exercise their liberty or personal choice to keep their property, or employ it elsewhere, without a federal penalty to be paid at the muzzle of a gun.
One thing we can’t forget about ObamaCare, is that it claimed to do everything it could to address the rising cost of insurance. But it did virtually NOTHING to address the rising cost of health care.
The price of insurance is absolutely correlative to the price of health care, and if you want insurance to be affordable, worry about the cost of health care. With the ever-present specter of malpractice, along with insurance policies being required to cover unlimited routine visits, certain complex procedures, and pre-existing conditions, doctors will only increase their services, driving up the sum-total on health bills, increasing the wait-time for those services, driving up the demand for doctors, ergo driving up the inherent cost in health care service and the cost of insurance. It is a vicious cycle that does more to damage the quality and efficiency of care we have become used to in the United States.
The Democrats’ attitude toward health-care seems to be: we don’t care how awful the service is, so long as everyone may access it.
Liberals would mandate that every driver be covered for oil-changes, brake-jobs, pre-existing body rust, and <ahem> headlight lifts;
They would do nothing to lower the cost of auto parts and mechanic-labor, and then vilify GEICO for cars breaking down on the side of the road;
They would require every mechanic to have received a college degree and be certified by the state and federal government in order to work on cars;
They would require all repair shops to follow volumes of regulations to ensure safety and cleanliness;
They would encourage mechanics to change the oil, recharge the battery, run a computer diagnostic, and check the brakes — JUST IN CASE — every time someone came in because their engine was making “a funny sound;”
They would create an industry out of lawyers filing suit against mechanics and parts makers because they didn’t do everything they could to ensure the plaintiff’s car was returned to “like-new” condition;
They would rather create the impression that a car can last forever at another’s expense, than encourage drivers wisely to maintain their property with their own property, and then, simply, to enjoy the ride while it lasts;
They would require Rolls Royce to sell their product at the value of a Gremlin, which would eventually require individuals to purchase a Gremlin at the price of a Rolls Royce.
In short, they would do everything they can to drive up demand, and then attack the suppliers for the rise in value.
No, we cannot forget about Obamacare. When our expectation is to have the finest product available, at the expense of another person’s property; and when life is that product, it is impossible — by the laws of economics and the laws of logic — for our nation ever to maintain its prosperity. We will create a stagnant mediocrity, grant to a faceless human authority the power to determine how much life and quality of life is “acceptable,” and elevate our dependence on that authority until property is void, liberty is nostalgia, and self-propriety — i.e., life — is nothing more than a pluralistic determination of worth.