Posted on 11/21/2013 2:38:08 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Now that the entire country sees the ten-alarm fire that has set our healthcare system ablaze, Democrats feel compelled to do something. Their Mr. Fix It plans are akin to an arsonist posing for a photo op with a 2-liter pitcher of water to put out the wildfire. Will Republicans continue to pose with them in the photo op or will they kick them aside and smother the fire?
There are two clear observations about Obamacare at this point: it cannot be fixed and it will not collapse on its own. As we are now seeing from the cancelled insurance plans, the industry has been working on revamping the insurance market for three years. Obamacare has already collapsed the healthcare system. It can only be rebuilt by completely repealing the law.
Similarly, the law won’t go away by itself. They will fix the website one day, and the mandates and regulations on insurance will continue to force people into dependency on subsidies and Medicaid expansion. Worse, on the actual healthcare side of the equation, scores of doctors will leave the field of medicine due to the onerous burdens that go well beyond the insurance regulations. Yes, in some sense you can refer to this as a collapse of the system, but that is exactly what Obamacare was designed to do with its inexorable path towards single-payer.
As we’ve said many times, we cannot afford to wait until the website is fixed and the dependency takes root. It’s tempting for Republicans to just sit back and enjoy the polling data, but polling data will not get rid of the law. Polls are not elections. And even 2014 will not save us. In the best case scenario, we will have 51 seats in the Senate with a unified filibuster-strong Democrat minority that, when coupled with the wayward Republicans, will give Senator Harry Reid a defacto majority. Moreover, President Obama will still be president. Waiting until 2017 is simply unacceptable.
In a sane world, Republicans would utilize this time to force the issue on Obamacare using our leverage points, not just to talk about it or help Democrats fix it. One challenge conservatives had with making Obamacare the centerpiece of the October budget showdown (aside for Senate Republicans sabotaging the effort) was that Republicans failed to prep the ground for the fight over the past few years. In fact, thanks to Mitt Romney, Obamacare was not part of the political discourse for an entire two years.
That has all changed over the past month. While we were stymied by fellow Republicans during the actual showdown, we did succeed at restarting the national discussion on Obamacare. The ensuing breakdown of the private insurance market has given us tailwinds like never before. For the first time in Obama’s presidency, even some of the low-information voters have finally realized the failure of Obama and his signature legislation. Moreover, we know now that the shutdown polling was off base and superficial.
Accordingly, it makes no sense why Obamacare should not be a part of the budget discussions. Most people have forgotten or don’t know that the budget impasse was not solved last month. The new budget deadline is January 15 and the new debt ceiling is February 7. The deadline for reaching a budget conference deal is just two weeks after Thanksgiving.
But, alas, we have no leverage. Senator Mitch McConnell has made it clear to Senate Democrats that he would never fight any budget or debt ceiling. They have completely echoed the scandalous Democrat talking points about default. In fact, they have publicly declared that they will lash out at conservatives who try to fight Obamacare and prevent endless increases or “suspensions” of the debt ceiling.
Consequently, even with Obama’s approval rating sinking into the 30s, and Obamacare as toxic as ever, Democrats have no reason to fear the budget deadlines next year. The only points of contention are locking in the sequester cuts that were already locked in and extending super-long-term unemployment benefits for yet another year. When it comes to fighting Obamacare, it’s all hat and no cattle.
At the very minimum, conservatives need to push for two concessions:
Even if they already surrendered the budget battle, they must secure an agreement from Democrats to pass all of next year’s 12 appropriations bills in regular order and go to conference on each bill individually. This will lay the groundwork for fighting Obamacare in one or two bills without having the rest of the government as collateral damage in a shutdown. That would give us the opportunity, at the very latest, to fight Obamacare right before the mid-term elections without the specter of a full government shutdown. Republicans always said they wouldn’t mind fighting just the debt ceiling because there is no direct government shutdown. Well, now is the time to start debunking the myth of default and committing to ending this practice of suspending the debt ceiling law. The debt ceiling fight will coincide with the period of time when American workers begin to receive their first paychecks for 2014. Most people will incur a large bite out of their pay due to the increased withholdings for higher premiums. This will augment the public disquiet that is already brewing from the destruction of private insurance.
Any Republican who blithely ignores Obamacare when it really counts and when we really have leverage does not deserve your vote. Obamacare will not collapse on its own. We must force the fight once and for all – without the full-scale sabotage campaign from the GOP establishment.
Greg Sargent: Dems try going on offense: It’s Obamacare versus ‘Cruz Care’
"....................I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as ”Cruz Care.”
With Ted Cruz set to roll out his own health plan — one that will probably look like the usual grab bag of GOP reform ideas, which just aren’t a reform alternative to Obamacare – Dems plan to tar GOP Senate candidates across the country with it, by hitting them as proponents of “Cruz Care.” Many GOP candidates also embraced Cruz’s Obamacare-driven government shutdown.
The “Cruz Care” campaign is grounded in a conviction that Republicans — and not a few D.C. pundits — are misreading public opinion on Obamacare. Dems believe that despite the law’s unpopularity, many voters don’t view the health care issue as a zero sum decision over whether Obamacare is good or bad. Rather, they can be persuaded to see this as choice — between fixing an admittedly imperfect reform and giving it a chance to work, and the GOP alternative, which is essentially to go back to the old system, where junk insurance and a lack of standards ”exposed people to financial and medical calamity.”
................I broadly agree polls show disapproval of the law does not equal support for the GOP position of repeal.
Republicans continue to maintain Obamacare will be nothing but a liability. “ObamaCare was designed with the intention of forcing millions of Americans from their current insurance into the ObamaCare exchanges.................The same politicians and Washington insiders who promised that everyone could keep their health insurance and doctors if they wanted despite knowing and voting otherwise are now asking voters to trust them? Vulnerable Democrats face an ugly choice: Admitting incompetence or admitting that they lied.”............
A lot of this is very “inside baseball” to me. But I’m wondering what will happen when the website still isn’t working next week, or next month.
There are going to be people who lost their coverage and haven’t been able to obtain new coverage because of that. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.
What happens then?
It truly astonishes me that their website didn’t work, that the Oregon website doesn’t work, that the Maryland website doesn’t work.
People keep saying “the website will work, eventually” and sure, ok it will. But what happens in the meantime?
And, let’s face this: even if tomorrow the law was repealed, how would people get their coverage back? The ins. cos. have made the changes required by Obamacare, and even when he said “hey, you can forget about it for a year” everyone said “no we can’t, it’s all been changed”.
What would happen under a repeal scenario? How would they be able to make those changes?
This disaster is going to get worse, that is what I’m thinking.
The Republicans must come up with an alternative to Obamacare and Ted Cruz is the only one who can do it. But the media pressure against his plan will be a firestorm of distortions, half truths, and propaganda. Ted Cruz is extraordinally talented and hard working, but this assignment is almost impossible.
Pray for our nation.
The hemorrhaging is exactly what will effect how each side proceeds.
It would be nice if the GOP had one side.
And contact your member of Congress and your Senators.
Amen to that!
“The Republicans must come up with an alternative to Obamacare...”
Correct me if I am wrong, I believe they submitted several alternatives; but Harry Reid ‘canned’ them.
And in the words of one Democrat wise man, "That's a big effin' deal."
LOL——good one.
It was always meant to be a disaster. Obamacare was never meant to work. It was meant to fail so they could get socialized medicine (a complete government takeover aka single payer).
However, it is failing too fast—so the government is taking the blame, instead of the planed scapegoats: private companies, health care industry, profit-motive, Republicans, and racists. So now it’s difficult for the government to make the case that the solution is more government, since the government is generally perceived to have created the mess in the first place.
However, will Pelosi and Reid abandon Obamacare? No, not under any circumstances. Even if the Republicans retake the Senate, would Obama veto any attempt to repeal Obamacare? Yes.
WHY? Because health care is the Holy Gail of Communism. If government has control over decisions of life or death, they own you. Ultimately, that’s what this is about: GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE POPULATION, REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUALISM, FREEDOM, AND LIBERTY. Obama, Pelosi and Reid will not let this monstrosity die without a fight. They would rather sacrifice the senate and many house seats. They are at the doorstep of the socialist transformation of the US. Nothing is more important to them. And if the Republicans allow the sense of entitlement to leak in and have half the population addicted to further subsidies, it would be extremely difficult to correct, if not impossible.
The end of the Democratic Party?
Mmmmmm.....sounds like good news to me.
(Hums "Happy Days Are Here Again")
We should start calling him "Wrong-Way Boobamba." Remember---he "vowed" to destroy the Republican Party----but he ended up destroying the Democrat Party, instead.
Looks like he needs a new GPS system from Santa. ROTFLOL.
Even if Obozocare is repealed, Scotus has blessed government power to force us to purchase whatever it wishes, as long as it is disguised as a tax.
No need for that. We have an alternative, it is emergency rooms and charity-run health centers. The emergency room is demonized by the press and mostly democrat politicians but it works. As for charity care, it works really well in rural areas, not so well in crowded cities. But it is the sworn enemy of most statists.
It's also the most inefficient and most expensive method of dealing with people without healthcare.
I keep hearing about what is considered to be “junk” health insurance, but what, exactly, does that mean? The way most of these new “compliant” policies are being written, is to make the deductible or co-pay requirements SO high, as to provide practically no insurance at all until catastrophic levels of expenses are reached, then only pay maybe 80% of those expenses over $5,000 or $10,000. For many families, this is a quarter or more of their GROSS annual income, and they are closer to being bankrupted for medical reasons than they ever were before. The “approved” plans are in themselves just another variety of “junk” policies.
Alan Grayson, the slimeball congresscritter from the Orlando area of Florida, accused the Republican plans (there are several) as being focused entirely on cost containment. “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly” is a perfect example of picking up on a half-truth, and like a half-brick, it is both easier to throw, and provides twice the ammunition when hurled separately.
“Don’t get sick”, a euphemism for sensible preventative care, is not a “plan”, it is common intelligent response to the vicissitudes of life. And as for assuming that the mere fact of contracting an illness or injury is inevitable death, we are all born with an expiration date, and sometime, sooner or later, every one of us shall come to a crisis that becomes the end of life. Whether we meet that well and with a sense of fullness to a life well lived, or we cripple along for years with a progressive degeneration (a delicious phrase, on a couple of different levels, both political and physical) and impairment of our facilities, still holds as a matter of choice, however badly made. But as every mother who has nursed an infant through the night knows, it almost always gets better in the morning. Human beings are highly resilient creatures, able to meet challenges at a personal level and recover, sometimes almost miraculously, from injury and illness. If we were not, the human race would have died out long ago.
The one plan calls for death panels, the deliberate withholding of cure or mitigating assistance to cope with the effects of degeneration, and screening techniques to reward or deny treatment based not on medical needs, but political expediency of the moment. But in all circumstances, there is the assumption that individuals cannot be depended upon to make intelligent decisions, with the aid of trustworthy medical professionals, on matters concerning their own state of health. This sort of decision is placed in the hands of third parties, be it insurance schemes or a single-payer agency which is an arm of government.
That is a false assumption, one that for which I call BULLSH*T. One’s personal state of health is and always was a totally PERSONAL consideration, much like the choices in entertainment, or foods, or the place of dwelling, or the colors with which one may choose to dress in and surround themselves in their daily activities. None of the government’s business, at any level. And once a person has reached the emancipated level of living, not even subject to approval of friends or family.
Living well is not only the best revenge, it is also the most satisfying and illuminating course of life.
Live well and prosper. Beam me up, Scottie.
Then they had better get the word out with simple, easily explained details because the media is already honing in on this. They hit Ayotte with the question of 'what would you replace it with' over the weekend and it was deer-in-the-headlights time for her before she stumbled out some lame-ass "we need to word together on a real solution" nonsense. Cruz babbles about 'market based solutions' and 'healthcare that can be taken from job to job' without any explanation on how that would work, and work better than Obamacare. Right now it looks like the GOP has nothing to offer. That perception needs to change now, while Obamacare is on the ropes.
I would like to know this also.
My impression was the GOP never (and still) got its own act in gear, and has yet to present an alternative.
Is this incorrect?
I enjoyed reading your great post.
Bump!
Great explanation!
Bump!
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