If only the Democrats hadn’t exploited temporary control of the White House and both houses of Congress to push through vastly unpopular health care legislation and instead had asked for bipartisan input for an incremental plan…oh, well. ObamaCare was bound to be a colossal mess. This has much to do with the illegitimate way it was birthed.
In a way, with regard to ObamaCare, we’re now having the national discussion we should have had before Congress voted on it. But since we're having the debate at this point rather than at the proper time, the conversation is taking unusual, possibly historical turns. I allude, among other facets of the conversation, to Senator Ted Cruz's non-filibuster filibuster.
The discussion will only heat up as new, ugly facts about ObamaCare become available. For example, the state exchange rates for ObamaCare are now available, and if I were in my twenties, I’d be in a state of shock.
The young are going to pay a lot more in order to defray the costs of the ObamaCare edifice. Carriers will no longer be able to factor in a subscriber’s medical history, but that doesn’t mean nobody pays. You do, Ms. Twenty-Something. The Wall Street Journal publishes the exchange rates today.
To give you an idea of what's in store for your young friends: If you are a twenty-seven-year old single person in Birmingham, Alabama, your lowest available premium used to be $80, now it is $170. Let’s look at some of the other locations: Little Rock goes from $31 to $190; Miami from $66 to $166; Wichita from $43 to $123; New Orleans from $39 to $170, and Columbus, Ohio, from $47 to $205. Thanks, kids. I guess I’ll have to have some acupuncture on your tab. Of course, some of these people will receive subsidies to foot the bill for higher premiums. And that will be on my taxpayer’s tab.
The simple fact is that no matter what happens on Capitol Hill, ObamaCare is a mess. It would be funny if it were not going to cause so much suffering. Michael Graham writes:
Not to be the party pooper — I like a knock-down, drag-out political fight as much as the next guy — but we are talking about people’s health insurance here. And health insurance affects other small side issues of life such as, “Do you have a job” and “Did you get sick and die?”
So amid U.S. Sen. Cruz’s filibuster and Sen. Harry Reid’s cries of “anarchist!” could I bother you just for a moment to talk about how Obamacare is actually performing in the real world?
Graham has a catalogue of the life-affecting glitches in ObamaCare that have been reported just this week. Summary:
It’s killing jobs, costing billions and sending insurance costs soaring.
When it comes to ObamaCare, the bad news is the good news. Pure and simple: It won't work. This would be unmitigated good news, if it weren’t for the human toll. It is oppressive, costly and won’t provide good medicine. So maybe we will have a chance to get it right—if the world’s best medical system is still any good by then. The Wall Street Journal writes this morning:
Our point is that when Washington legislates on a grand scale, it sets in motion a game whose long-run outcome nobody can predict.
The unpredictable outcome the Journal highlights is erosion of support for Medicare. If this happens, the GOP must be ready to fight the left on its real dream: a single-payer system. The single-payer is government.