Medical Care: Part V

This is the fifth in a series of intermittent posts about American medical care and the government's attempts to meddle in it. The first four can be found in my archives from August, September, and November of 2009.

Given my prior posts, it would be logical to expect me to spend today ranting about the unseemly actions taken last night by 219 elected Democrats.

But there would be no point, because I knew it was going to happen. Only the hopelessly naïve could have expected anything else to be possible. So I will limit myself to commenting on two things about last night.

For one, I feel compelled to mention that in its present form, Obamacare breaks virtually every promise The Exalted One made to drum up support for it. He said it would drive insurance premiums down, yet it is sure to drive them up. He said the overall cost curve for health care would be driven down, yet it is inarguably driven up. He said Obamacare would lower the deficit, yet it will obviously increase it, and do so in dramatic fashion. And going all the way back to his presidential campaign, Obama said he would lower taxes for 95 percent of Americans, and that he would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year, yet both of those claims are now proved false.

And the other thing about last night? Well, I am remembering the days when Bush was president and Obama was a senator, and Bush was advocating for Social Security reform. When polls showed that the public did not agree with Bush on the issue, Obama publicly said that Bush should stop seeking reform because “the people have spoken.” But after Obama came to the Oval Office and started advocating for his vision of health care reform, and the people spoke not only in polls but also in elections to show their disagreement with him, he responded by thumbing his nose and imposing something the public manifestly does not want.

The above information speaks for itself.

I am angry, but I am not discouraged because I know last night was just one battle in a philosophical war that will last a long time. Many states are planning to fight Obamacare in the courts. November is coming and we have a chance to hit the Democrats with an electoral bloodbath like none they have ever seen. And because Obama & Co.’s radical impulses have made the difference between conservatism and liberalism so vivid, it is already easier to persuade the undecided than it was during the fuzzy days of Bill Clinton’s triangulation.

If you need to be bucked up, go here or here. We can win this war…and as long as we fight back with confidence, and don’t play into the Left’s hands by getting gloomy and despondent over last night’s vote, we will win it.

Addendum #1, 3/23/10. The more I've thought about it, the more I have to point this out: not only did every Republican representative vote against the bill, so did more than 13 percent of the Democrat representatives, and the percentage of Americans who oppose it is higher than the percentage of Americans who are Republicans. In other words, opposition to Obamacare is bipartisan, support of it is not.

Addendum #2, 3/23/10. As expected, 13 states jointly filed suit today, challenging the bill's constitutionality. You can read the suit here. More than 20 other states are said to be considering similar legal action.