The “Dangers” Of Obamacare

Obama’s Obamacare debacle continues. Not only did Obamacare rescue conservatism from disgrace, but its backlash gave us a Republican Congress. And its after effects are still coming. Indeed, even reliably liberal sources are finally noting that Obamacare may have problems. Now, in two weeks, the Supreme Court will hear the case, and all the indications are the court will strike down part of it. Let’s discuss!

In the past couple weeks, there have been a series of articles BY LEFTISTS pointing out that Obamacare may not be all it’s cracked up to be. They identify four “dangers”:

● Danger One: Obama made a big deal of promising that “if you like your current plan, you’ll be able to keep it.” Yet, according to a CBO report, under the best-case scenario, 3-5 million people will lose their current plans. Under the CBO’s worst-case scenario, this number could be 20 million people. That would be 12% of people who are currently insured.

Of course, the reality is that this will be much worse. For one thing, historically, government “worst-case scenarios” are almost always understated by a factor of five. That would mean 60% is a more likely number. And there are several reason to believe that’s the case here. The CBO scores these things using a static model, meaning they don’t take into account how people will change their behavior over time. Instead, the CBO just does the math based on how the world is today. Thus, they did not factor in the increasing costs of policies, nor did they factor in that once companies see their competitors gaining an advantage by dumping their healthcare plans, more companies will follow.

The left is trying to downplay this by saying that businesses can’t really dump their coverage without upsetting their employees -- an interesting argument for the left to make, as they regularly claim businesses don’t care about employees. But of course, this isn’t true. Employers do things for financial reasons, not sentimentality, and financially it will be stupid not to dump the healthcare plan onto the government.

● Danger Two: The Democrats promised Obamacare would reduce healthcare costs. Of course, it actually contained nothing to bring costs down, and costs have continued to soar. Recent polls show that 49% of people blame Obamacare for the rising cost of premiums! The left is whining that it’s unfair to blame Obamacare for this because Obamacare “wasn’t intended to bring down costs,” but that’s how they sold it. I guess they shouldn’t have lied?

● Danger Three: They are starting to realize the law will not pay for itself, and the cuts in Medicare which were supposed to finance it aren’t happening. Whoops. Bankruptcy, here we come.

● Danger Four: The Democrats bet heavily on the idea that “the more the public knows, the more they’ll like it.” But that’s not happening. Obamacare’s favorability sits around 41%. And the reason for this is obvious -- it hasn’t helped anyone, but its negative effects are already being seen everywhere: higher premiums, lost insurance, doctors quitting the business, higher taxes, etc. That’s the way the Democrats set it up to hide the true cost so the law could be passed. Now they are paying the price for that deception. Moreover, according to polls, in just one year, the number of people who know what the supposed benefits of Obamacare are (subsidies, can’t be turned down, etc.) has fallen by half. Basically, it’s now seen as all pain and no gain.

This is what the Democrats get for massaging the law and lying about it to get it passed. And now the law goes to the Supreme Court. In two weeks, the Court will hear the oral arguments in the case. They’ve scheduled an incredible SIX hours for oral argument over three days. They have not give a case this much time in 45 years. The implication is they plan to make a major decision, which bodes poorly for the Democrats, who will in all likelihood now lose the very thing they risked so much to pass.

Nevertheless, the left is trying to put on a brave face. Indeed, they are making all kinds of bizarre and contradictory points to explain why the various conservative justices might vote to keep Obamacare.

For example, the Washington Post argues that “Roberts is protective of the court’s reputation and sensitive to the perception that its decisions are politicized.” Thus,
he won’t want five Republican-appointed judges throwing out a law written by Democrats. Hardly. For one thing, if the Court cares about its reputation being apolitical, then it will do what it believes is correct about the law -- not what the Washington Post thinks needs to be done to please Democrats.

Moreover, this court has proven fearless at both making big decisions and making unpopular decisions. The left likes to claim that this is an “activist court” and to a degree they are right. This is not a court which respects the assertions of government that it has cart blanche power. Between this, the prior gun case, Citizens Union striking down campaign finance, and next year’s unexpected affirmative action case, this is clearly a court determined to start taking away the government’s power to control the rights the Constitution leaves to the people.

The left also argues that some of the other conservative justices might join the liberals because they have supported the use of the Commerce Clause to invade personal privacy before. Yeah, but... those were criminal cases, where conservatives have less love for the Constitution. Those also didn’t force anyone to take any affirmative actions, those laws only forbade people from doing things the Federal government wanted to make illegal. That’s a HUGE distinction.

It is interesting to note that the same leftists who are now predicting that anywhere from 1-3 of the conservative justices will jump ship are the same people who claimed that the lawsuit brought by the states was frivolous in the first place. Clearly, they had no idea what they were talking about then, and I expect they have no idea now. It seems clear to me that the Court will strike down the individual mandate, but not the rest, on a 5-4 vote.

Now here comes the part you won’t like. This COULD actually be bad for us. Here’s why. Because of the way conservatives have played the entire Obamacare debate, the public is outraged at the individual mandate, but oblivious to the rest. If the Supremes strike down the individual mandate, then the desire of the public to repeal the rest might fade. Thus, conservatives will need to pound away at the idea that the rest needs to go because it won’t work without the mandate.

On the other hand, this might actually make it easier to repeal and replace Obamacare because the public will already view the law as having been struck down by the Supremes. Thus, it shouldn’t be particularly controversial if Republicans start repealing the law’s parts piece by piece.

It’s hard to tell which way this will play. But no matter what happens, it is clear that Obamacare will continue to hurt the Democrats in November and possibly even the November after that.