The ObamaCare Factor

     As the Obama administration and Democrats crow about the Affordable Care Act, and try to convince an evermore skeptic public that the sows ear of government-run healthcare is preferable to the silk purse of a free market system, one has to wonder if they are enjoying their trip to the land delusion over reality. The real delusion infecting the Obama White House and Democrats in congress is the one that informs them that no one will remember the "features" upon which ObamaCare was sold to the American public. A public, who in ever increasing numbers have little faith that the new law will improve their own healthcare.
     Even if one accepts the administration's number of eight million signups to ObamaCare, only 6.8 million have actually paid their first premium, and 87% of those persons are receiving a government subsidy paid by the taxpayers of this country. This is not a harbinger of good things to come, either for healthcare or for the financial health of this once great nation.
     During the propaganda campaign engaged by Democrats to try and sell their government-run healthcare to Americans, the number of uninsured Americans was stated to be somewhere between 30 and 50 million. No matter what the actual number was, half of the uninsured were healthy, younger persons who could afford coverage but decided not to spend the money. Of the remaining, half were eligible for Medicaid, but did not bother to sign up. Additionally, at least ten million of the uninsured maintained that status for four months or shorter because they were between jobs.
     One of the main promises of ObamaCare, besides "If you like your doctor and your plan, you can keep your doctor and plan," was the promise that every American would be covered by insurance. The fact is, according to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2016 there will be 30 million uninsured Americans. So even giving the promoters of this disastrous law a generous amount leeway, that means the entire healthcare insurance industry and the healthcare industry itself was uprooted at enormous costs to taxpayers, just to insure 15 million more persons. And that is if one believes the upper end of Democrats' estimates of uninsured persons before the law.
     The administration fought hard for the individual mandate before the law's passage, and have since created so many exemptions as to make the mandate non-existent. This move will create a permanent underclass of uninsured Americans that Democrats can use as a reason to expand subsidies and grow the federal behemoth. Even for those "fortunate" enough to be insured in the wake of ObamaCare, their premiums are up to 261% higher, their deductibles are 2 to 3 times higher, and their choices have been limited because insurance companies have had to eliminate some hospitals and doctors from their plans to make them comply with the law.
     To the extent that there was a problem with the healthcare industry before ObamaCare, it was government created. The legislation pushed through congress in the 1980s by Ted Kennedy, which created HMOs, was the precursor to government-run healthcare. Even with this government interference, 85-90% of respondents to polling over the last 25 years said they were happy with the system that was in place. So the push to upend the previous system was another Democrat manufactured crisis with the express purpose of growing government influence and power over the people, not to solve an existing problem. This is the way of tyranny which has become the modus operandi of the modern Democrat party, and is sadly seeping its way into the Republican party as well.