From its inception to its passage, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has become the exact opposite of its professed, entitled intentions. Not protecting patients, the law has consequentially raised health insurance premiums, diminished quality access, and increased taxes, even though President Obama and his supporters staunchly avowed that the law was not a “tax†.
There is nothing affordable or caring about Obamacare, with its tens of thousands of pages of regulations. Health care practitioners are leaving their profession. An unprecedented shortage of health care providers still face the full provisions of the law as they enter into effect in 2014.
What is the sorry history of this sorrowful 2,500 page law, and how will it likely end?
In 2009, President Obama went on a speaking tour throughout the country touting how his signature legislation — the progressive dream of Democratic Presidents from Harry Truman to Hillary, er Bill Clinton — would allow children to remain on their parents’ health coverage until they are 26 years old. The law would prevent insurance companies from removing clients because of pre-existing conditions. The law would also require that everyone own insurance, so that hospitals and taxpayers would not have to pay for those who could not.
Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives worried about the massive growth of government to inform and enforce these demands. Liberals like Henry Waxman (D-California) submitted that by requiring everyone to have insurance, the financial resources pooled together would create more coverage and broaden access. Thus, the law would require that individuals purchase health insurance, or pay a fine.
For those who could not afford health insurance, state-sponsored Medicare exchanges would permit them to purchase quality health care coverage at a reasonable price. In addition to requiring individual coverage, the law would force employers with more than fifty employees to provide health insurance for employees working thirty hours a week.
The more that Obama talked about it, the more that Americans balked at it.
Economists exposed the fallacies of this law, which should have lead to its downfall right away. With all third-party arrangements (including health insurance), the consumer and producer never deal directly with the costs of a product or service. If someone pays a set fee for a service, yet has all the access to care, the result is rationing, as more people seek a service without any care for the cost.
Citizens in countries with government run health care, like Great Britain and Canada, contend with long lines, closed health clinics, poor service, and rationing on everything from bandages to operating rooms. A black market for health services has emerged in these countries, as well, often brazenly, as the same governments which enforce “equality and quality†cannot provide either.
Despite the bad press of single-payer models, President Obama pressed ahead. With handouts to wavering US Senators, Obamacare’s hidden provisions purchased their votes for passage. The political meanderings and backroom shenanigans which pushed Obamacare through Congress expose the political immorality and unconstitutional nature of this law. The rapid process of reconciliation through the US Senate to the House, where not one Republican voted for the bill (and some Democrats voted against it), demonstrated the sheer partisan nature of the whole process.
Millions of Americans decried the law then, and they still hate it now. In 2010, the Democrats lost the House. Preparing for 2014, President Obama is walking away from his extra-legal legacy, little by little. One could say that he is repealing Obamacare “piecemeal.â€
Of course, the Supreme Court crippled the law considerably at the outset. To force anyone to purchase anything was a massive rewrite of the Commerce Clause, and thus Chief Justice John Roberts erected an iron fence around that clause for good, yet upheld the law as a tax (or “a mandate enforced by a tax†per double-dealing Henry Waxman). The Court also ruled the Medicare exchanges unconstitutional. As of June 14, 2013, only 26 governors have supported them. Legislators have called for the repeal of the medical device tax in the law (including the US Senators from Massachusetts). The Department of Health and Human Services has acquiesced to corporations of religious standing, and thus will not enforce provision of contraceptives in the insurance mandate.
With the prodding of the House of Representatives, President Obama has also signed legislation to repeal other lesser known yet still exorbitant portions of Obamacare. He removed the 1099 mandate for small businesses, froze the funding to hire more IRS enforcement agents. Obama has enacted cuts and removed subsidies which were unsustainable or unenforceable, including the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS).
President Obama announced that he will delay the Employer Mandate to 2015. Too little, too late: Major corporations have slashed workers’ hours or dumped them off the company insurance entirely. US Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) labeled the law’s gradual enforcement “a train wreck†, which is slowing down, yet still set to crash. Now House Speaker John Boehner suggested that the President delay the individual mandate, as.
Most Americans would suggest:
“President Obama: Not a piecemeal repeal, but repeal the whole deal!
