ObamaCare is even more deplorable than the Senate process that produced it, and every Democratic Senator effectively cast the deciding vote.
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 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.
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.
Obamacare would offer major financial rewards for couples who live together but avoid marriage — and it’s extreme marginal tax-rates on a marriage’s second income would provide a strong incentive for the lower-earning spouse (most often the woman) to leave the workforce.
Congress originally tried to defend the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate (which would require all Americans to buy health insurance) based on its power to regulate interstate commerce, but it has since gotten cold feet and has switched to a defense based on its power to tax. But not buying health care isn’t an aspect of commerce, and a penalty for not buying health care isn’t a tax — and for the Supreme Court to uphold the mandate on either basis would require the Court to allow Congress to go where it has never gone before.