Copyright 2013 by John T. Reed
Mitt Romney was going to to repeal Obamacare if he got elected. He lost. No matter. The Democrats are repealing it. They have been since day one.
The Obama Administration has given 1,231 waivers, mostly to unions. Those waivers cover 3% of the population of the U.S. Every waiver is a repeal of Obamacare with regard to the group in question.
I hope someone will explain to me how that does not violate the equal protection clauses in the 14th Amendment and the equal protection implied by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Another example of the repeal is that 33 of the 50 states have refused to set up the exchanges mandated by the law—an action they were authorized to take by Justice Roberts partial upholding of the Constitutionality of Obamacare. He was joined in that 5-4 decision by the four Democrats on the Supreme Court.
That means the federal government will have to create the exchanges for those 33 states. But in a scathing April 2, 2013 column titled “Obamacare Incompetence,” in liberal Time magazine, liberal Joe Klein says,
The Administration has had three years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so. [emphasis in original] Obamacare will fail if he doesn’t start paying more attention to the details of implementation, if he doesn’t start demanding action. And, in a larger sense, the notion of activist government will be in peril — despite the demographics flowing the Democrats’ way — if institutions like the VA and Obamacare don’t deliver the goods.
The Republicans could not have said it better themselves.
Obama and the other prominent Democrat elected officials are Fabian socialists, that is to say, stealth socialists. They are socialists, but realize that brand has been damaged so they claim to be be merely in favor of a progressive income tax and a government safety net, a.k.a. “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.”
The other kind of socialist are revolutionaries who want to take over in a flash, smash capitalism to smithereens, and have government immediately own everything and make all decisions. The Fabians believe they can only get away with turning America into a totalitarian socialist state if they do it gradually—the salami slice or boiling frog approach.
The “single payer” is the federal government, in other words, “single payer” is another Fabian socialist camouflage phrase. Before it collapsed, the USSR had “single payer” everything. The second S in USSR stood for “Socialist.” The Soviets were not Fabian gradualists. They were revolutionaries, i.e., 1917. Our way or the gulag, or maybe we’ll just kill you.
“Not getting there immediately” is an acknowledgment of the Fabian need to do it gradually so the public does not realize what is going on.
But when they briefly had the White House and both houses of Congress, Obama and his allies like Pelosi could not contain their underlying socialist revolutionary nature and suddenly seized control of one sixth of the economy: health care.
Of course, the big problem with socialism is that it does not work. Government operations, whether Amtrak or the DMV or FEMA or whatever are always described as SNAFU, FUBAR, or FUBB. One of the reasons for Fabian gradualism is to sneak the incompetence and inefficiency in on the public gradually so they do not associate it with the government takeover.
Oooops!
Having to take over health care in a big hurry because of the death of Teddy Kennedy and his 60th vote (which stops filibusters) caused the Fabians to lose their salami slice discipline and go revolutionary. That caused the backlash that has and remains in the polls that indicate a majority of the American people oppose Obamacare. Now we are seeing the plain old incompetence, inefficiency, waste, fraud, and abuse that are endemic to all government activities and it is happening so fast that the Fabians are not able to employ the salami slice or boiling frog camouflage.
79 Senators, including 33 Democrats, recently voted to repeal the medical device tax which is part of the funding for Obamacare. All of the Democrats had previously voted for Obamacare and the medical device tax. That would be another partial repeal of Obamacare if it becomes law.
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced it cannot meet the deadlines set by Obamacare and will be at least a year late. That is a partial repeal of the deadline portion of Obamacare.
An Obamacare-caused attack by HHS on Medicare Advantage was beaten back by a bi-partisan revolt.
I Googled “Obamacare falling apart” and got 471,000 hits.
The cost and the loss of personal freedom have been the main objections thus far. But now it’s also turning into horror and outrage over the near total inability of the government to implement the law.
People who were promised lower premiums are getting premium increase notices—big ones. More doctors are refusing to treat Medicare or Medicaid patients. Every doctor who retires and is not replaced or who refuses to treat Obamacare patients is repealing Obamacare. Every business that chooses to pay the penalty rather than contiune to insure is repealing it in the sense that the government is not ready to replace private health care and in the sense that Obama promised that if you like your doctor you can keep him or her and if you like your current plan you can keep it.
The above-mentioned Joe Klein complained that Obama seems uninterested in governing. No kidding Joe!? What was your first clue? His blank resume revealing he never had a job let alone an executive or management position? The fact that he likes to campaign and really has done nothing else in four years and indeed is back on the campaign trail already even though 2012 was his “last election” and he now “has more flexibility?” He is raising funds for the 2014 election is if he had a prayer of taking back the House and as if all of America’s problems would be cured by Nancy Pelosi being speaker again. God forbid.
Obama and the Democrats seem to think that health care is nothing but a vote in the lame duck Congress at the end of 2010. They seem unaware that it is also sick and injured people trying to go to the doctor.
It has been said that a liberal is a guy who throws a 100-foot rope to a man who is drowning 50 feet away from the dock, forgets to tie one end to the dock and then goes off to ‘help” someone else. That is a very good description of liberals like Obama, Pelosi, et al. and Obamacare. Obamacare will be one big abortion clinic with a ten-month waiting list.
It is possible when all is said and done regarding Obamacare that the un-Fabian Obamacare revolution will undo not only Obamacare but a lot of the socialized medicine the Fabians have been sneaking in over the last 50 years. That is exactly what Joe Klein is warning against.
John T. Reed