Why Obamacare Is Not Working

Why Obamacare is not working

The View from the Middle

We love it when our leaders are appropriately tough.  “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”  This was actually coined in 1797 by Robert Goodloe Harper as he attempted to paraphrase Charles Pinckney’s response to the French Foreign Minister’s demand for bribes.  We all love John Kennedy’s steadfast stand during the Cuban missal crisis and Ronald Reagan rose in stature when he suggested that he would “not negotiate with terrorists. 

Americans love when our leaders stand on principle and will not be moved.  So when President Obama said that he “will not negotiate” in our Continuing Resolution (CR) battle to fund the government, why did that bother me?  The reason is simple.  Pinckney, Kennedy and Reagan were talking about negotiating with our enemies.  President Obama was talking about “not negotiating” with other Americans, in fact, about half of our population.

But the real problem is that this is a trend.  When the President was elected, the Democrat party also controlled the House and the Senate.  He could have reached across the aisle then and included Republican ideas into his thinking, but we can remember his famous words that Republicans would have to “sit in the back seat” when it came to legislation.  And Obamacare is a classic example of that mindset.

He, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi did not include any Republicans in the construction of this law despite the fact that many of the core elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were conservative ideas.  This resulted in a law that was almost 3,000 pages long yet didn’t include the most obvious conservative ideas like tort reform and interstate insurance purchasing.

They then passed this law using gimmicks like reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority in the Senate, without a single Republican vote in either house.  One of the purposes of the reconciliation process was to limit debate, which is almost absurd when applied to this case.  When you are talking about a potential government takeover of one sixth of our economy, extensive debate should have been the expectation.

Why would Obama ignore the opposition party so completely?  Did he think he would always control both houses during his presidency?  Why does the resistance to this law surprise him or any American?  The process he, Nancy and Harry employed not only created a flawed law (witnessed by the waivers, delays and exceptions granted so far), but it also insured the resistance of those they snubbed.  Divided government (I would argue all democratic government) requires compromise, which this President seems incapable of. 

So, where do we go from here?  Bob Beckel, the liberal commentator on Fox News “The Five”, suggested that everyone should just get together and improve the law by adding provisions like tort reform and selling insurance across state lines. I SO wanted to say, “Bob, why didn’t democrats include these conservative ideas in the beginning?”  But we are where we are, so to Bob Beckel and Joe Manchin, democratic senator from WV, I say – Let’s do it.

Also, Americans overwhelmingly believe that this law should be for everyone.  We should eliminate exemptions for Congress, the President and the Supreme Court (A Rand Paul proposal) and in fact make sure that this law applies to everyone equally.  No favorites, no exemptions for anyone.  If it is good enough for me then it should be good enough for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Roberts and Barack Obama.

The House should pass this CR with just this one additional provision, to eliminate the Congressional subsidy. If the Senate and the President would still refuse to pass it and sign it, they would settle the dispute over who are the obstructionists?  It would be them!

Hopefully, conservative input would also eliminate some aspects of the ACA and reduce its intrusiveness; after all, the republican alternative bill is only 181 pages long.  We certainly could get rid of the ACA’s most unpopular provision, which was to create the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board).  This 15 member panel of bureaucrats, dubbed the “death panel” by Sarah Palin, is designed to set reimbursement rates for Medicare.  This panel will have the power to stop certain treatments by simply setting reimbursement rates so low that no doctor or hospital will perform them.

But all of this depends on the President’s desire and ability to negotiate with other loyal, patriotic Americans that just think differently than he does.  Can he do it?  We all can only hope so.