The President can’t shift blame for disruptions to his healthcare law
Written on Sunday, June 14, 2015 by Robert Pickup
President
Obama in his speech at the Catholic Health Association hailed his
signature achievement, Obamacare as a success. He said that under the
law more people are covered, the uninsured rate is down and there is no
more discrimination based on preexisting conditions as evidence the law
is working. The President also made it a point to say that the worst
predictions made by Republicans regarding the law have not come true.
Simon Maloy writing at Salon.com says
that the speech was meant to preempt the Supreme Courts decision in
King v Burwell and paint Republican efforts to reform the law as
disruptive. He says the President makes the case that Obamacare is the
new normal, that people are now dependent on the law and it would be
wrong to change it.
The
Presidents defense of the law and his attempt to create a narrative
where Republicans are disruptive of Americans lives leaves out vital
details. For example, when he declares that more people have coverage
while being technically true doesn’t tell the whole story. According to
Gallup the uninsured rate went down most among low income Americans and
Hispanics. It is disingenuous to say that these people have access to
healthcare because of Obamacare when they already had access through
Medicaid. The President also left out the fact that almost 5 million
people lost their
insurance because of his law, something he promised us wouldn’t happen.
These people then had to buy an approved plan that many times had
higher premiums and deductibles. The fact that more people have
insurance doesn’t imply access to good health care as the President
would like is to deduce. ER visits have spiked under Obamacare as well
as the closings of rural hospitals. Access to primary care Doctors and
specialists has also gone down.
Finally
the President cited as a success the fact that people can buy health
insurance despite preexisting conditions. The reality though is that
this had been Federal law since 1996 with the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act. This is really a straw man argument
any way. The purpose of insurance is to Insure against
future expenses not on known expenses. When Obama says that insurance
companies should have to pay for people who already sick that is akin to
allowing someone to buy car insurance after getting into a wreck.
The
President also said that the worst predictions by Republicans about the
law haven’t come true. Some of these predictions include the rationing
of care, death panels and skyrocketing premiums that will lead to the
collapse of the insurance industry. When making these predictions,
Republicans weren’t saying they would come true the day after the law
came into effect. They made these predictions based on the outcomes of
similar systems around the world and the fact that our population is
aging and there aren’t enough healthy people contributing to the system.
So while Obama can today say these things aren’t happening, 30 years
from now we will be grappling with the very issues Republicans warned
about today.
Maloy
says the President is setting the narrative that Republicans will be
disrupting people’s lives if the Supreme Court rules against the
administration on Obamacare subsidies. However Any disruption won’t be
as severe as the restructuring of one fifth of the U.S. Economy and the
thousands of exemptions and dozens of revisions and delays that is
Obamacare. I am almost positive Maloy wasn’t warning of any disruptions 5
years ago. The blame for any disruption should be laid directly at the
door of the Administration. They are the ones who wrote the law in such a
way as to punish States for not creating their own exchanges. This, as
we know from the Laws Architect was done intentionally to force
Republicans to comply or lose funding. Democrats in Congress are also to
blame for passing the law to find out what was in it as Pelosi told us
we needed to do.
When
the Supreme Court rules against the subsidies, as they must according
to the text of the law, Republicans will then have a chance to reform
Obamacare. Republicans will be fixing a five year disruption to
Americans lives with their reforms. It will be up to the President to
stand aside and let them do it.
Read more at http://patriotupdate.com/
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