This debate is much larger than just whether the government is blamed for a glitchy website; it is about whether the public trusts government or the private sector more.
Photo: Signing Affordable Care Act into law/ AP
HOUSTON, November 1, 2013 — Democrats will not be satisfied with anything short of full government control of healthcare. Like good disciples of Saul Alinsky, they will use any means necessary to get to this desired end.
In order to achieve the holy grail of single-payer healthcare, Democrats must do three things, almost simultaneously: First, Obamacare must fail; second, destroy the private insurance market by putting private health insurers out of business; third, in conjunction with their partners in the mainstream media, they must persuade America that private insurance companies, not the federal takeover of healthcare, are responsible for rising premiums, lack of access, and the cancellation of tens of millions of Americans’ healthcare plans.
In order for this to work, Democrats and the federal government must look at least semi-competent in their administration of the ACA. At the end of the debate, private insurance companies have to look worse than the government in the eyes of the American people. If private insurance companies end up looking more trustworthy and capable to the American people, the goal of government control of Americans’ healthcare will be lost.
This debate is much larger than just whether the government is blamed for a glitchy website; it is about whether the public trusts government or the private sector more. If we allow government to run and manage our health care, government will be in full control of our lives. With a vested interest in every individual American’s health comes a vested interest in every activity which even could affect any individual’s health.
Phases Two and Three of the Democrats’ plan to force socialized medicine on America are now in full effect. As the Democrats planned, insurance companies are being forced to cancel more and more healthcare plans, premiums are skyrocketing, and those who want to buy healthcare cannot do so because of a failed website that will end up costing over $1 billion when all is said and done. That billion-dollar website was supposed to do two things: allow people to create accounts, and link people to private insurance websites.
Obama and his minions have already begun to blame all of the repercussions from the government takeover of healthcare that the Tea Party had warned about for the last 5 years on insurance companies. Obama himself said, “Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received or used minor pre-existing conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy.” There are numerous examples of rank and file Democrats doing the same, with many more to follow.
Obama repeatedly promised that people could keep the plans they had before the health care law was enacted. “Period.” That was untrue, but Obama and his spokesman are clearly not embarrassed by the lie. They may not even be aware of it. The media have yet to call him on it, and it seems to be only through the media that he learns of important events that happen in his administration.
Section 1251 of Obamacare includes a grandfather clause that allows people with pre-existing insurance plans to keep those plans. It is fairly broad, and many in Congress on both sides of the isle demanded it be included in the law. But the administration eventually issued regulations that significantly narrowed the definition of what can be grandfathered in. Now, as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified, a plan that alters its premium by as little as five dollars a year does not qualify for grandfathering.
There have been over 10,335 pages of regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services since the passage of the law. In 2010, the Obama Administration was aware that a large percentage of Americans would lose their insurance. On page 34,552 of the 2010 Federal Register — the publication that contains every federal regulation — the administration wrote, “The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013.”
Given that 153 million Americans are covered by employer health plans, that translates in 93 million Americans losing their health plans. The Obama administration knew this in 2010, yet the president said that if you wanted to keep your old healthplan under Obamacare, you could. “Period.” His claim, repeated over and over again, that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” will forever be one of the biggest falsehoods perpetuated on the American people in the history of this country.
The Tea Party warned about all of this three years ago, only to be viciously maligned by the media. Those kooky radicals have been proven right yet again, but don’t expect the media, or even the Republican Party, to admit it.
This debate, which few have placed much importance on, will very likely make up the battleground for the hearts and minds of this country for generations to come. If the federal government prevails, the America that exists today will only exist in stories and history books.
There may not be a man in history who expressed this sentiment as well as President Reagan when he said, in a very famous speech from 1964, titled A Time for Choosing, “Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, ‘We don’t know how lucky we are.’ And the Cuban stopped and said, ‘How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.’ And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”
Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/time-choosing/2013/nov/1/if-america-blames-obama-obamacare-dies/#ixzz2jbcwcR9n
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