Posted on 01/12/2016 11:27:31 AM PST by Kaslin
resident Obama's eighth veto of his presidency came last Friday, when he quietly nixed legislation passed by Congress to repeal major portions of Obamacare. By allowing the crippled health care law to remain on life support for all of 2016, Obama and the Democrats handed Republicans a winning campaign issue for retaking the White House in 2017.
Officially named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare's manifest failure is the primary reason why Republicans regained a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Along with even greater successes at the state level, Republicans now control more legislative chambers (and by wider margins) than ever before.
Bills to repeal Obamacare had previously passed the House, but this was the first time a major repeal bill has made it through the Senate using the process of "reconciliation" which requires a 51-vote simple majority. That's what made it possible to send the bill to the president's desk, but as House Speaker Paul Ryan admitted, "It's no surprise that someone named Obama vetoed a bill repealing Obamacare."
The bill would have stopped the expansion of Medicaid, ended the mandates on individuals and employers to buy health insurance, cut off federal subsidies, repealed the "Cadillac tax" on premium plans, and removed the taxes on medical devices. It also would have defunded Planned Parenthood.
Americans are understandably impatient at the slow progress toward repeal of this monstrosity, but our Constitution generally requires at least two elections to intervene before any major change can be accomplished. In order to pass Obamacare, Democrats first had to win both Houses of Congress in 2006 and then the White House in 2008, but they held a 60-vote margin in the Senate for just two months from the seating of Al Franken until the death of Ted Kennedy.
Enacted in 2010 without a single Republican vote, Obamacare's survival depends on the flow of billions of dollars to insurance companies for continuing to sell health plans they say they are losing money on. It's corporate welfare at its worst, as health insurance companies have enjoyed record run-ups in their stock prices during the implementation of Obamacare, and pay their executives outlandish compensation packages worth tens of millions of dollars.
Half of Americans still oppose Obamacare and want it repealed, despite six years of promotion by the Obama Administration. More than half of the insurance co-ops established with billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies have gone out of business, abandoning nearly a million patients and leaving many physicians stuck with unpaid bills.
Many individuals have decided to incur a substantial tax penalty in 2016 rather than buy health insurance that would be even more expensive. The Obama Administration admitted that 10.5 million people have chosen to remain uninsured, spurning the opportunity to purchase coverage on Obamacare's insurance exchanges.
Meanwhile, health insurance costs are skyrocketing under Obamacare. The total cost of the premiums, co-payments, and deductibles is well over $10,000 per year for many healthy people, and the average premium increase for mid-level plans is a whopping 7.5% in just one year.
People are abandoning Obamacare insurance for reasons in addition to their astronomically high premiums. Patients face a lack of coverage for physicians who are not in their insurance plan's network, and patients who signed up for Medicaid are discovering that half of physicians do not even take Medicaid.
To many Americans, the penalty under Obamacare, upheld by a 5-4 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 by calling it a "tax," seems like a bargain compared with the increasing cost of insurance. Millions of Americans choosing to pay the penalty are unlikely to support any presidential candidate who insists on continuing to impose and collect that tax.
The failure of Obamacare, and the need to repeal it, could become the winning campaign issue that ends eight years of control of the White House by Democrats. The more that Obama and Democrats cling to Obamacare, the more that Republicans should insist on its repeal.
While Obama's veto of this repeal was expected, the exercise proves that Obamacare can be repealed as soon as a Republican President takes office, hopefully only twelve months from now. Democrats will not be able to filibuster a repeal of Obamacare in January 2017 any more than they could in January 2016, and Republicans have proved they can pass a repeal despite efforts to block it.
For seven painful years, Obama and Democrats have frustrated the will of the people by blocking repeal of the most unsuccessful legislation in American history. Republicans should look to what happened last year in Kentucky where Republican Matt Bevin was predicted to lose the race for governor, but after he made Obamacare an issue, he proved the polls wrong by winning in a near-landslide.
Pull the plug. Better yet, call Dr. Kevorkian.
Dad’s doctor of 17 years just went Concierge due to Obamacare. Now I got a find a new doctor for him.
All federal Ponzi schemes are on life support, of course. From their very beginnings.
What if the Democrats take back the Senate? I would not bet on the Republicans keeping 51 seats in the Senate next year.
I begged my PCP to go Concierge. He was totally disgusted with Obozocare, and went to a private large corporation to run their in-house medical care, away from gummint interference. I don’t blame him one bit.
What ‘Republicans’? Except for Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions, and Cruz, they’re all democrat except in name. Pi$$ on them all.
It was still born and brain dead at conception.
The idea is to induce sudden failure and bring about single payer. A twist on the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Wife’s insurance just went from $289 a month to $749.
I’m sure she’s not the only one...
Save the country:
PULL THE PLUG!!!!
Let it die a painful agonizing death
Obamacare is collapsing rapidly - just as designed.
I give it eighteen months at most - but when it breathes its last - there will be a crisis like no one in a developed country has seen in 150 years.
I sure hope not
Hope all you want.
It was designed to destroy the status quo in a way that would make it impossible to regenerate, and it is succeeding.
You are wrong.
The design was very clever.
I think that crisis will come BEFORE the absurdly named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act breathes its last and is recognized as being in reality the Patient Abandonment and Unaffordable Neglect Act.
The design was indeed VERY clever. It was designed to finish the job of destroying health care in America. Any real problems that existed were almost totally CAUSED by prior government interference in health care and the cure that Obama prescribed was to increase the dose of the poison by a multiple of fifty or more, like telling a wino who is puking his guts out that he needs to drink more to solve his problem. I honestly am still amazed at how many people bought into this insanity. The possibility that it could ever work out well is equal to the possibility that Hillary Clinton will become our greatest ever president or that I will suddenly flap my arms and fly like an Eagle.
To anyone reading this who ever thought for one minute that “Obamacare” was a good idea, go and find someone to handle your affairs for you, you are delusional.
Well then, it was an abortion.
It is an abortion
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