At the health-care summit, Democrats tried hard to claim that there’s basic agreement between Republicans (none of whom voted for ObamaCare in either chamber) and Democrats (279 of whom voted for ObamaCare) on health-care issues, but in truth there is a canyon separating the two sides over the question of whether decisions should be made by the American people or by Washington.
President Obama’s claims that ObamaCare has incorporated the best cost-cutting proposals from both sides of the political aisle, are specious. His pledges to conduct state-level medical malpractice reforms, investigate Medicare and Medicaid fraud, increase Medicaid provider payments, and permit health savings accounts in the health exchanges, are vague and plainly lacking in seriousness — while his rhetorical diversions reveal his disregard for empirical evidence and for substantive discussions of serious cost-cutting proposals.
President Obama explains that we need a “transition step” between privately controlled health care and an eventual government monopoly.
ObamaCare is a “super-welfare” program that Americans can’t afford and don’t want, it has been advanced through sheer ideological willfulness by President Obama and the Democratic Congress, and it not only calls into question our country’s future finances and medicine but raises crucial questions about the nature of a free society.
Just before the final House vote, Rep. Paul Ryan argues that this debate is about what kind of country we are going to be in the 21st century.
ObamaCare’s mandate that states reimburse primary-care doctors under Medicaid at the same rate as under Medicare, creates a funding cliff in 2015 — when the federal government’s promise to pick up the tab would expire, leaving states on the hook for an estimated $5.5 billion a year.
President Obama’s White House Budget Director Peter Orszag explains that the newly created Medicare Commission, or Independent Payment Advisory Board, would possess “an enormous amount of potential power,” including “statutory power” to institute proposals that wouldn’t have to be sanctioned by Congress and couldn’t even be overturned by Congress without the President’s approval.
Obamacare is designed to push people into a system that won’t exist — a health-care bridge to nowhere — and, thus, merely living with it isn’t an option. The only options are repeal, or taking further steps toward an eventual government monopoly.
ObamaCare bears about as much resemblance to the Heritage Foundation’s ideas for empowering patients and lowering costs as a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese does to a salad.
Evidence of a significant free-rider problem in Massachusetts may be a harbinger of things to come under Obamacare.