(Mike Chamberlain/The Cranky Hermit) – ObamaCare’s biggest cheerleaders in the Silver State, the Las Vegas Sun editorial board, were probably hoping to be able to dust off the pom-poms to celebrate the law’s first anniversary. Instead they were forced to assume their role as the Democrat party’s henchmen. They unsheathed the long knives in, once again, attacking the law’s opponents and blaming those opponents’ dastardly attacks, rather than ObamaCare’s numerous and destructive flaws, for its unpopularity.
Should health care really be this divisive?
No, but the Republicans have made it so. Their relentless attacks, which have misrepresented the law and unnecessarily provoked people’s fears, have worked, and polls show a clear divide in public opinion.
As usual, they refuse to address any of the legitimate concerns and complaints about the legislation, preferring instead to attribute any opposition to the law to political gamesmanship and ideological rigidity on the part of Republicans.
But this isn’t really an issue of the law’s legality, it’s a matter of ideology.
They criticize Republicans for rebuffing Democrats’ efforts to negotiate after passage of the bill (when did that happen, by the way?) but completely ignore the legislative shenanigans and outright payoffs Democrats employed to pass it (remember the “Louisiana Purchase” and “Cornhusker Kickback”, to name just a couple).
Conservatives are fighting government involvement in a system that is badly in need of reform. Instead of arguing the merits of the issue, they raise the specter of a government “takeover” of health care and say care will be “rationed” out. But the government isn’t taking over health care. It would help people access private health insurance.
The idea that ObamaCare will help give people access to private insurance is another oft-repeated claim by the Sun. But, as with most of their other oft-repeated claims, it is false. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in the same report the Sun once touted for showing ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit, more than half of those who would become insured under the law would obtain insurance not through private carriers but through the expansion of current government programs, like Medicaid.
Comparing private insurance company rationing to government rationing is absurd. As a matter of fact, I recently had my own experience with insurance company rationing. My medical provider requested authorization for a certain procedure I was going to have done. The insurance company denied it but, guess what, I had it done anyway. I paid for it myself. What a concept! Had this been rationed by the government I would not have had that option.
The involvement of the federal government will actually help — for example, insurance companies can no longer deny people coverage based on their health histories.
It will only help if you ignore the unintended consequences, one of which is included in the Heritage Foundation‘s run-down of ObamaCare Year One.
Preexisting Condition Mandates Destroyed the Child-Only Market. Just one year after Obamacare forced all insurers to sell coverage to all applicants—no matter what—insurers in 34 states have exited the market entirely, and 20 states now have no insurers that offer child-only plans.
Without anything of substance to back themselves with, the Sun had to throw out some old-fashioned hope.
In addition, the law should ease costs, which have spiraled out of control for years, and that should help everyone.
Should? Except that it won’t. As we’ve discussed before this law does next to nothing to attack health care costs (as opposed to health insurance costs) and, among many other things, it raises taxes on medical devices and prescriptions, which will certainly not reduce prices. What it does do is put private insurers in a vice of increased mandates, rising costs for care and medicine, and higher taxes on one side and government price controls on the other. The effect, and maybe the intent, will be to squeeze private insurance companies until they can no longer afford to operate.
As the Heritage piece discusses, even the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services believes that the impact of this law will be to accelerate the rate of cost increases. In addition, as revealed in a WSJ editorial this morning, the CBO now estimates that ObamaCare will cost the taxpayers nearly $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.
What was interesting about this Sun editorial is they avoided mentioning many of their previous selling points about ObamaCare, such as the claim that it will reduce the deficit. Maybe they even now realize that was a lie all along. But they will continue to defend it and attack its opponents because that’s what partisan political operatives do.