In a recent speech with state governors, President Trump admitted that implementing government health care is a tricky business and that Republicans are having a hard time pulling the plug. One would think that the wayward health care law, which is responsible for skyrocketing insurance premiums and deductibles, would be easy to ax. Even the standard issue, rose-colored glasses worn by Democrats cannot hide the fact that the bill has been a complete failure. Whence the trouble?
I remember when Obamacare was first rolled out to the public as a 20,000 page bill that nobody in our government seemed to have read. Nancy Pelosi clumsily explained that we would need to pass the bill in order to know what was in it. Healthcare.gov ended up costing three times what was expected and was launched months after the intended date due to mismanagement. I even remember when Obama said that Americans could keep their doctors, if they wanted. We know how that ended up.
Conservative and libertarian Americans flocked to Tea Party protests to oppose Obama’s attempts to expand socialized medicine, and today Americans cite “health care” and “dissatisfaction with government” as two of the largest issues facing the country. This was a healthy reaction but there were warnings that the law would be difficult to dislodge, if it was successfully passed. Wary observers may recall one Tea Party participant’s eloquent sign: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” The promise for free goods can corrupt even those Americans that are most suspicious of government.
During the campaign in 2016, Trump went so far as to say he was a “fan of the [individual] mandate” and that the more popular aspects of the law would remain. Today, Republican voters that oppose “socialized medicine” clamor to keep the parts of the bill that would help them personally. As Trump aptly put it: “People hate it…but now they see that the end is coming and they’re saying, ‘Oh, maybe we love it.’” “Repeal and Replace” has become “Rebrand and Re-neg.”
Programs like Obamacare are how government expansion occurs and persists in general. Government-sponsored goodies are as potent and addictive as heroin or cocaine, particularly when people are convinced that it is a right that they are owed. To fund the largess, the government raises taxes and imposes restrictions on businesses. Hard-done-by Americans organize into pressure groups to lobby for new handouts to mitigate the ruinous effects of the old handouts. By the end, a single entitlement thread has morphed into a regulatory spider-web.
This was done by design. Leftists for decades have known that Americans would reject explicit socialism, but would handily vote it in piecemeal if couched in the proper language.
Advocates for the free market were always aware that government health care would be a train wreck. What is one to expect when a gang of government bureaucrats, armed with their pens and the entitled screeching of their constituents, takes it upon itself to try to serve a complex, modern service to a population as large and diverse as the United States?
“You know, health care is a very complex subject,” Trump said. “If you do this, it affects nine different things. If you do that, it affects 15 different things.” Couldn’t agree more, Mr. President.
Good writing style! Punchy, clever. Maybe a bit weak on details – a lot of vague generalities – IMO. I guess because it’s only a ToD.
Thanks! And yeah, these are meant to be shorter, more polemical, and more frequent. The longer ones with more facts and references will be less frequent, but this is a new strategy meant to get a larger audience.
I do not know