I read an article yesterday or the day before about the five stages of political denial, equating it to the five stages of grief. All in all, it was pretty funny, but in all honesty, the author missed one. He missed, “the idiotic attempt to self justify the huge mistake,” That’s the stage where after a politician is forced to admit that their spiffy new law is not working as packaged and sold to an angered electorate, and in fact that their grand scheme is an unmitigated disaster, they dish out the, “let’s not undo this terrible idea that we’ve inflicted upon society, but, “fix it,” instead.
This is the brand new strategy to help the Democrats avoid the well deserved consequences of their wholly-owned-and-nobody-else’s-responsible-for-it-Affordable-Care-Act this November. They are now, after the previous attempts to slough off ownership, going with the meme that just a few tweaks here and there will make this all better. The problem of course is not that the law requires a few tweaks here and there to help smooth out a few errors in its implementation. The problem is with the entire premise of this idea, and the underlying refusal to pay any attention to the laws of economics that govern any society, simply because those laws are viewed as mean and uncaring.
From the Investor’s Business Daily Article linked to above:
Vulnerable Democrats think they’ve found a winning strategy for the November elections: Tell voters they can fix ObamaCare, but Republicans won’t let them. It’s a con. ObamaCare is unfixable.
‘Joe Garcia is working to fix ObamaCare,” says an ad for the Florida House Democrat. “He voted to let you keep your existing health plan and took the White House to task for the disastrous health care website.”
Of course, Garcia fails to mention ObamaCare is the reason millions lost their health plans to begin with. Or that its problems extend well beyond a glitchy website.
But this is the Democrats’ midterm election strategy, as revealed in a memo Politico got its hands on this week: Admit that ObamaCare has flaws, promise to repair them and argue that Republicans will only make things worse. Party leaders point to polls showing more people favor repair than repeal.Still, why should anyone believe them?
Democrats already promised voters that ObamaCare would fix what was wrong with the nation’s health care system, only to be caught in a web of lies. Now they’re asking voters to trust them again to fix the very problems ObamaCare itself created.
Plus, ObamaCare’s flaws aren’t theoretical any more. Millions have been hurt. They’ve had plans canceled, gotten stuck with huge deductibles, lost access to their doctors or were priced out of the market altogether.Case in point is a recent news story noting how many ObamaCare enrollees in San Francisco “are struggling to find even one doctor willing to take new patients.”
Another tells the story of a mechanic who can’t find a physician to treat his debilitating back pain after ObamaCare forced him to drop his old plan and buy one through an exchange.As every marketer knows, dissatisfied customers will tell twice as many people about their experience as will satisfied ones.
But the deeper problem with the Democrats’ campaign promise is it’s built on yet another lie: They can’t fix ObamaCare. Nobody can. Its flaws are fundamental, not incidental. Any “fixes” just create new problems.
ObamaCare’s sky-high premiums, for example, are an inevitable result of the regulations at the core of the law.
When the launch day arrived, and the $635 Million on line shopping cart didn’t work, the late night comedians had a field day, and we all had fun with that. Make no mistake about it though, that was not the real tragedy of this part of the whole sordid affair. The real tragedy was in the small fact that our Government legally, blew $635 Million on something that every expert in the field says should have been up and running perfectly with the price tag of $2 Million to $5 Million. Being at our most generous here, that represents an over payment of something just North of 12,000%, for a product that still is not working up to the necessary specification. It is impossible to bend any cost curve down, as these geniuses promised, while overpaying for everything by a factor of 120. The average family of Four probably spends $120 per week at the grocery store. Imagine telling them that you’re opening a store which will deliver them inferior groceries, guaranteed to satisfy no one’s hunger, and will increase their tab per week to $12,000. Then promise that this grocery store will save their family $2500 bucks at the end of the year, how long do you think it would take for their scornful laughter to end? When you couple that with the fact that these are the very people who have spent their entire lives convincing us that they are smarter than we are and should be put in charge of our lives, I can certainly see why most in our nation do not wish to have them making our medical decisions for us. Try not to cry when you read this next sentence. These people now have the life and death decision making for the entire nation resting on their broad shoulders.
The economics of this law, passed by the way without having actually been read by those voting yes on it, are at best misguided. A slightly less diplomatic way to put it would be flat out evil. Stories are cropping up everywhere of people who were forced against their will off of plans that they liked, only to see that their new Obamacare approved plans would not let them get treated for their preexisting conditions, like Cancer, Leukemia, Lupus, or what have you. Even those who were able to find new plans on the Zerocare exchanges have discovered that premiums are only one half of a very tricky equation. They’ve seen their family deductibles increased to an amount that is exactly the same as having no actual coverage anyhow. Drug shortages are sweeping hospitals everywhere, which makes the failure complete. No Spicoli, you can not fix this car.
The only way America, to undo this monstrosity is to get rid of the people who did it to us in the first place. If there is a D following their name, do not vote for them, chase them from town via torch and pitch fork. Remember this when they try to convince you that they are conservative or fiscally responsible Democrats this year and in 2016, there is no such thing.
