OPINION:
When will Obama administration officials realize that the more they talk about the health care law, the more people hate it? Six months after the passage of President Obama’s 2,500-page health care law, the sales hype to help this monster gain popularity has come to sound increasingly like the pitch from a car salesman confronted with the truth that he’s sold someone a lemon.
Every complaint about Obamacare is met with rote repetition of talking points: “But it’s really a beautiful car” or “Hey, let’s not quibble over engine trouble. Take a look at that chrome.”
The law’s supporters even have invoked the Divine to help their so-called “reform” gain traction with the American public, all to no avail. Majority support for Obamacare remains a dream, which won’t surprise anyone following the headlines across America touting huge premium increases, small-business tax increases and insurance companies just dropping plans altogether.
The sad tale of health care in Massachusetts - the template for Obamacare - reveals the future of federal reform. More than four years into an insurance overhaul touted by former Gov. Mitt Romney and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber in the Wall Street Journal as a health care solution, costs to businesses are skyrocketing. One small-business owner summed it up in a word: “insane.”
Jobs are being lost as companies downsize, outsource and cut back simply to comply with the mandates placed upon businesses by the law. Premium increases are, in some cases, exceeding 3O percent just for next year alone, a full three years before the individual mandate kicks in.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama continues to tout great benefits to children even though the availability of health insurance just shrank for tens of thousands of children and families as health insurance companies flee the market.
Again the car salesman’s refrain: “Don’t pay attention to that. Look at the great new ’bill of rights’ for patients.”
Because of the “maintenance of effort” requirements in the health care law, state budgets, already in crisis, will see slashed services for Medicaid recipients. In Arizona, where an attempt to help balance the state budget by making some cutbacks to Medicaid was met with a threat of the loss of $7 billion per year in federal aid (this in spite of an 18 percent increase in the state’s sales tax passed this past spring), Obamacare’s October surprise will arrive one week after the law’s six-month anniversary.
According to the press release on the state’s Medicaid website, the following services will be eliminated as of Oct. 1: most dental care, podiatric care, insulin pumps, cochlear implants and certain organ transplants, among other necessary treatments for many people.
At the same time that the law allows children to stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26, colleges are concerned that health plans for millions of college students are at risk. In Connecticut, one of the few states where Obamacare has fared comparatively well in the eyes of the public since March, emergency rate increases of up to 20 percent had to be approved to cover the potential cost of new regulations.
There seemingly is no end to the list of bad consequences discovered in the new law. After all, as the Congressional Research Service puts it, the number of new regulatory agencies created in the Obama law is simply “unknowable.”
Every supposed “good” provision of this new law is overshadowed and undercut by an avalanche of bad provisions. The American people, protected by lemon laws when they buy a faulty car, will see no such protection when it comes to Obamacare.
The health care law is a lemon, and an overwhelming number of Americans want it rescinded now. The law has failed Americans enough already.
Dr. Eric Novack is chairman of the U.S. Health Freedom Coalition and chairman of Arizonans for Health Care Freedom.
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