ObamaCare: The Aftermath

59% of Americans oppose ObamaCare.  58% want a smaller government.  But Obama and the Democrats can’t be bothered by such trifiling details as what Americans think.

Democrats to America: Drop dead:

Quoting Washington Examiner:

Never before in American history has a measure of such importance been imposed on the country by the majority party over the unanimous opposition of the minority.  Democrats have continually sought to create a halo effect for Obamacare by associating it with Social Security and Medicare.  But the reality is that both of those landmark programs were approved with strong bipartisan support in both the Senate and House. ... Such bipartisan consensus was what the Founders sought with the Constitution.  But Democrats made a mockery of bipartisanship by shoving Obamacare down the throats of Republican lawmakers and snubbing the popular majority that opposed it.

Senator Lamar Alexander’s response:

Quoting Lamar Alexander:

This is an historic mistake.  And unlike Social Security, Medicare and civil rights legislation, the only thing bipartisan about it is the opposition to it.

The mistake is to expand a health care delivery system that is already too expensive instead of reducing its cost so more Americans can afford health insurance.

This taxes job creators in the middle of a recession.  It means Medicare cuts and premium increases for millions of Americans.  When you include the cost of paying doctors who serve Medicare patients, it will increase the national debt.

A warning and a reminder that Democrats haven’t cornered the market on slimeballery:

Quoting Megan McArdle:

Republicans and other opponents of the bill did their job on this; they persuaded the country that they didn’t want this bill.  And that mattered basically not at all.  If you don’t find that terrifying, let me suggest that you are a Democrat who has not yet contemplated what Republicans might do under similar circumstances.

And make no mistake about what the Democrats’ end-game is:

Quoting Jerry Pournelle:

The health care bill was ideological, transformational, unpopular, and not well understood -- indeed we still don’t know the details.  It is almost certainly the beginning of the end for the private health insurance industry (although something called that may survive as a highly regulated, highly subsidized, public utility).  Any "insurance" policy that requires the insurer to accept anyone regardless of their pre-conditions at the same premium it charges those without the conditions is not insurance, it is an entitlement; and no company can afford to do that.  First they will have to raise premiums for everyone since the healthy will have to pay for the unhealthy.  As those premiums rise fewer and fewer can afford them.  Over time more and more will go to the "exchanges" and subsidies.  Over time the system becomes the single payer system you see in other countries.

That may be all to the good, but the majority of the American people don’t think so, and the majority of taxpayers decisively don’t think so.

ObamaCare is the opposite of reform.

Quoting Jonah Goldberg:

Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors.  Way to get big business out of Washington!  They will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees.  Then, when healthcare costs rise -- and they will -- Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame and out from this Obamacare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.

When it becomes obvious that ObamaCare has failed, having made healthcare worse yet more expensive, guess what the Democrats’ solution will be: more government spending and more government control.