[September 23rd was] the six-month anniversary of the passage of President Obama’s signature legislation, what has come to be known as ObamaCare. The White House is feting this semi-anniversary, but few Americans are in a mood to join the celebration.
Obama, who can be thin-skinned when people disagree with him, was downright irritated when the early polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed his health care “reform” bill. He criticized the polls as premature, saying “So before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.” (President Obama, April 1, 2010)
The problem with his argument is that the more Americans find out what is actually in this monstrosity of a bill, the less they like it. Polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports show that 55 percent of the public supported the repeal of ObamaCare on March 25, just two days after its passage. Today, a half-year later, the number of those favoring repeal has grown to 61 percent.
I am not one to call the President a liar. I have too much respect for the office held by giants like George Washington and Ronald Reagan for that. But I do believe that much of what Obama has said about his own health care bill is simply not true. He claimed in Maine that people could keep their own health insurance, in Maryland that people could keep their own doctors. In Washington, DC, he promised that his plan would cut costs but would not lead to the rationing of care. He has consistently claimed that it would not fund abortions, and that its “end-of-life visits” would not lead to euthanasia.
Six months later, all of these claims are being questioned by taxpayers who see people losing their health care plans and paying more for health insurance. More and more Americans are realizing that they and their children will be stuck with the bill as healthcare costs rise, and that they will be paying for “family planning services” that include not just sterilizations and contraception, but abortions as well.
Obama has repeatedly reassured nervous Americans that “if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.” (President Obama, April 1, 2010) In reality, millions of Americans will lose their health insurance in the coming years as a direct result of ObamaCare.
On September 21, 2010, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced 1.2 million seniors will be forced out of the Medicare Advantage or Medicare prescription drug plan that they currently enjoy next year. Add to this the news that nHealth has dropped all its customers because of ObamaCare and is going out of business, and that the American National Insurance Company will not sell health insurance to early retirees, self-employed workers, and small businesses because of ObamaCare. In fact, the worst blow of all may fall upon small businesses. Regulations issued by the Obama administration may cause up to 80 percent of small businesses to lose their current plans.
You will also be paying more for your health insurance in years to come because of ObamaCare. Obama continues to maintain that “This law will cut costs and make coverage more affordable for families and small businesses.” (President Obama, June 22) But the reality behind the rhetoric is that ObamaCare is causing health insurance prices to skyrocket. The Wall Street Journal reported that ObamaCare is causing rates to increase up to 20 percent for some buyers. In Connecticut, rates are increasing 18 percent for small businesses and 14.2 percent for the self-employed, early retirees, and others who buy their own coverage on October 1, 2010.
These increases are taking place not because of greed on the part of insurance companies, as Obama’s media minions like to claim, but because of the new mandates and regulations contained in ObamaCare, all of which cost real money to comply with.
The elderly will bear the brunt of Obama’s deceptions, such as his claim that “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” (President Obama, June 8, 2010) The reality is that doctors are already fleeing Medicare in droves. In Texas alone, more than 300 primary care physicians have stopped seeing seniors in the last two years. When ObamaCare cuts Medicare payments to doctors next year, even more doctors will bail out of a system that overworks and underpays them, leaving millions of seniors without a personal physician.
Costs are rising as well, flying in the face of Obama’s claim that “over time, costs will come down for families, businesses, and the federal government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades. That’s what this reform will do.” (President Obama, April 1, 2010.) We now know that, according to President Obama’s own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), ObamaCare will increase health care spending by 6.3 percent annually and will cause health care to consume almost 20 percent of the our nation’s GDP. In other words, ObamaCare will only pile more debt on the mountain of debt that Obama’s other forays into socialism have caused.
The easiest Obama claim to refute is his contention that ObamaCare would not fund abortions. This is because he refuted it himself by issuing an executive order explicitly forbidding the funding of abortions through ObamaCare.
When I first learned of this particular ruse, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Because it is a ruse; albeit very clever one that many people, apparently including “pro-life” Democrats like Bart Stupak, fail to see through.
You see, if ObamaCare had not funded abortion in the first place, then his executive order would be unnecessary. So the executive order constitutes evidence that, contra Obama, ObamaCare had funded abortion all along.
At the same time, however, since federal law always and everywhere trumps executive orders, Obama’s order is not worth the paper it is written on. As a Harvard-trained lawyer, the President surely realizes that his executive order will not stand up to the most cursory of judicial reviews. Obamacare will then be used as Obama, Reid and Pelosi intended, as a vehicle to promote and perform abortions.
It seems to me that our choice as Americans is simple: Either we euthanize ObamaCare before it is too late, or it winds up euthanizing us.
It is time to pay an “end-of-life” visit to ObamaCare.
