Yesterday, the Obama administration and the Democrat party, in general, took what many in the press are calling a “victory lap” in celebration of reaching their goal of 7 million Obamacare signups prior to the midnight 3/31/14 deadline. As I saw this unfold, my immediate question was, “Whose victory is being celebrated here?”
Since the “Hollywood elite” are most often found alongside Obama, cheering every claim, I was a bit surprised to hear related cynical remarks come from Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon. However, I thought Fallon offered a pretty realistic perspective when he said,
“That’s right, the White House said that it surpassed its goal for people enrolled in ObamaCare. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you make something mandatory and fine people if they don’t do it. And then keep extending the deadline for months. It’s like a Cinderella story. It’s just a beautiful thing. You make everyone do it. Isn’t it great how many people do it? But if you still haven’t enrolled, you might have to pay a penalty called the individual shared responsibility payment, which is 1% of your salary. Then Americans said, ‘Man, good thing I don’t have a job.’”
Other factors not taken into consideration in the President’s victory lap are the unanswered questions of how many people have actually paid their premiums, whether enough young and healthy people signed up to offset the cost of signing up older, less-healthy customers and how many of those who enrolled via HealthCare.gov were simply people who had their old policies canceled because of the law. And, for me, the biggest unanswered question is whether the law has helped in providing insurance for the estimated 48 million Americans who were previously uninsured. The most recent finding by McKinsey & Company shows 27% of enrollees were previously uninsured. That calculates out to about 1.9 million of the 7.1 million being touted as enrolled. In other words, after all that Democrats have insisted on us pouring into Obamacare, over 46 million of the 48 million uninsured remain uninsured.
The answer to my initial question, “Whose victory is being celebrated here?”, was summed up well in a statement by House Speaker John Boehner. His statement was,
“Millions of Americans are seeing their premiums rise, not the lower prices the president promised. Many small businesses are afraid to hire new workers, instead cutting hours and dropping health coverage for existing employees. Many Americans can no longer see their family doctor, despite the pledge no one would lose access to their physician. Seniors are feeling the impact, losing their Medicare Advantage plans the president promised they could keep.”
What this says to me is that the victory isn’t one for the American people. It was another instance when Obama and his fellow-ideologs ignored that our government was established to be “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Once again, it is clear that, even if takes more spin than that of a Las Vegas roulette wheel to make it appear like a victory, they’re only interested in what they deem to be best “for the people”. And, I would add to that the reminder that this mentality on the part of the supporters of Obamacare is no different from those who supported Hillarycare and who continue to support its author.
Personally anything that can get health care for more americans for me is a win for the American people. I would not have preferred it have been by the force of a tax if you don’t signup, but I don’t understand why some people who do make a good income don’t get health care. One person I know contracts for a large company that is flying him out to Texas, etc. and his family did not used to choose to buy health insurance and I never understood why. We would have had many more Americans with health coverage if the states had decided to extend the Medicaid rolls, but now, many will suffer including hospitals and doctors, because of the states decisions to not extend it.