“Perhaps more important than overall impressions are public perceptions about whether people will eventually be better off under the legislation. Unfortunately for the bill’s supporters, the polling evidence doesn’t suggest strong confidence. Twenty-six percent in the March 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation poll say they and their families will be better off, while 30 percent say they will be worse off. A strong plurality in March 2011 says the cost for them and their families will get worse. Twenty-three percent say it will get better. As for one of the bill’s selling points, the ability to get insurance, 26 percent in the latest Kaiser poll say it will get better, 25 percent worse, and 46 percent stay about the same.”
“Advocates of ObamaCare were utterly disconnected from Americans’ concerns about the bill—most especially their concern that it violated the Constitution. Nancy Pelosi was surprised when a reporter asked what part of the Constitution justified a mandate on American citizens to purchase a consumer good or service: was this man serious? Her press spokesman later clarified, lest there be any confusion, that constitutional questions were not serious questions.”
“But the larger issue remains a stubborn philosophical divide over the proper role of government in working out the cost and access problems that have left 50 million people uninsured and countless more with an increasingly tenuous grip on whatever coverage they do have. Opponents remain critical of the overhaul they fought to prevent, and experts say the 2012 presidential election may present the biggest threat to its continued implementation.”
“After a year of learning what is in the law — and seeing its effect on families, small businesses and our economy — it is now clear that Obamacare is a failed experiment. Sadly, this failure was predictable and very expensive.”
“The sum of evidence is clear. The controversial law takes health-care reform in the completely wrong direction toward higher costs, higher taxes, higher spending, and higher deficits. Real reform begins with repealing this monstrosity and putting federal spending on health care on a sustainable path. For the health of American patients and our economy, Congress must repeal this law and replace it with commonsense reforms that empower consumers with more choices, increased transparency, and lower costs.”
“Of course, I imagine that at this point supporters are saying that the best is yet to come–that ObamaCare just hasn’t really gotten going yet. Perhaps so! But this is the one year report card, and the first-year grades are pretty underwhelming.”
“As I’ve pointed out before, fixing the law isn’t an option. Market-based health care reform simply can’t be reconciled with Obamacare, which is a massive system of central planning. We need health care reform, to be sure, but it needs to be based on personal choice and free markets.
That can’t be done until members of Congress swallow what some may find to be a bitter pill: the repeal of Obamacare. If not, next year’s diagnosis is sure to be worse.”
“The monstrous Obamacare health law was passed by the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010 and signed into law by President Obama nine days later. Nancy Pelosi said that Congress had to pass the law to find out what was in it. Despite a lengthy debate, new details trickle out seemingly daily about the destructive impact of the law. One year later, a group of conservative health policy wonks have banded together to release a book that comes as close as possible to being the authoritative tome on the full impact of Obamacare.”
“One year ago today, the then-Democratic House of Representatives openly disregarded the cool and deliberate sense of the people and rammed Obamacare down the American people’s throats. At the time, the Democrats claimed that their bill would become more popular once Americans found out what was in it (a process that, as Democrats explained, required passing it). A year later, polls show that Obamacare’s popularity has declined even further.”
“House Democrats held a birthday party last week for passage of the health-care law. Just as we looked at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s floor speech noting the milestone, we will now examine some of the claims made by Democrats…
By contrast, House Democrats appear to show little hesitation about repeating claims that previously have found to be false or exaggerated. So let’s take a tour through the numbers.”