ObamaCare at Two
By Mary Theroux • Friday March 23, 2012 5:00 PM PDT • 10 Comments
Today is the second anniversary of President Obama’s signing into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “ObamaCare.” Despite front-loading benefits in the hope of winning opponents over before the costs start kicking in in 2014, public opinion against the law remains exceptionally high, and is seen increasingly as a political liability to Democrats seeking reelection this year, including the President:
President Barack Obama doesn’t plan to tout the law publicly on Friday, the second anniversary of his signing the bill. A senior administration official said his involvement politicizes the matter, which makes it all but impossible to change negative public opinion about the law.
This is an astounding change from the political hay the President and the Democrats then in majority made in celebrating its passage—remember Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her entourage’s victorious march through protestors (pictured above)?
What’s changed? As per usual, reality has diverged from predictions:
While President Obama promised that passage of the law would result in the average family’s premium dropping by $2,500 by the end of his first term, the latest figures show premiums have instead increased an average of $2,200, even as more families have simultaneously moved to higher-deductible plans utilizing Health Savings Accounts—shifting even more costs of care to the individual on top of higher premiums.
Democratic Congressmen, facing continued opposition to their support of ObamaCare, have been quietly at work to eviscerate one of the law’s key components projected to hold costs down: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). This unelected and unaccountable panel, composed of 15 experts appointed solely by the President—with no checks on its functioning by Congress or the courts—will be charged with determining what health care treatments are covered and at what price. When health spending exceeds any given year’s budget benchmark, the panel is charged with providing for a centralized fix.
The likelihood of the budget benchmark always being exceeded can be judged by experience with Medicare itself:
When Medicare was passed in 1965, for example, the federal government estimated it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Medicare actually cost $110 billion in 1990.
It is thus difficult to foresee the IPAB devising any solution for such shortfalls other than rationing, and perhaps the analogy of the IPAB to “death panels” was not so far-fetched after all. As a Venture Capitalist who backed the revolutionary development of angioplasty pointed out in Forbes, the IPAB is a recipe for the end of medical innovation. Thus, the House’s passage yesterday of a bill to repeal the IPAB.
Finally, the outcry over the imposition of a mandate that employers—including religious employers—cover 100% of the costs for their employee’s “birth control”—which includes sterilization and abortificants—clearly caught the administration by surprise. So far, the administration and the Department of Health and Human Services are standing firm, but the resulting loss of support by some of the bill’s formerly strong religious backers has been an unexpected blow.
With oral arguments being presented next week in the Supreme Court case regarding the “individual mandate” that could make or break ObamaCare, the White House is hoping the media blitz it has planned—including a “Prayerful Witness for Health Care” to encircle the Supreme Court from 11 am – noon on Monday; and a “Post-Argument Scrum” on Wednesday, at which legal scholars and ObamaCare advocates will tackle reporters outside the court house and in front of the United Methodist Building next door (headquarters for the 3-day pro-ObamaCare campaign)—can win over the court of public opinion that is so far eluding them.
Unfortunately, if the Supreme Court upholds the mandate and ObamaCare goes forward, ObamaCare at four will see a reality only further diverged from rosy predictions, and patients and taxpayers are likely to find themselves the ones needing prayer.
Tags: Constitution, Family, Healthcare, Presidential Power, Price control, Propaganda, Regulation, Science, Women 
The battle for liberty was lost the moment you obtained a Social Security number. Your are now a numbered walking corporation and a ward of the State and thus are required to file and pay Income Taxes and participate in Obamacare. The Supreme Court will not save you. All the discussions and arguments over “mandates” and affordability is meaningless. Within the Social Security System and the tax system, the government controls your life. The best you can do is to obtain a good accountant and hope that the chains of the slave don’t rest too heavy on your backs.
libertarian jerry | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
I feel very betrayed by the democrats over Obamacare, there is no question that it will be too heavy of a cost for this country to support. No doubt that it was done as a power grab, and to give the unions what they want, to shift the cost of healthcare for healthcare off of them and onto john Q public. This is unconstitutional and it is sad that this can has been opened because now, since it seems ok to force unconstitutional laws down the throats of an unwilling public, it will continue and history has shown us where that will go, we have the corrupt officials who currently hold office to thank for that. Thank you for saddling my grandchildren with your debt. This sure could have been done smarter, hopefully the supreme court will shed some light in this dark time in our country.
Bruce Keyes | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
It is never too late, don’t give up the fight.
Bruce Keyes | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
Amen, Jerry. Even if the Court strikes down this ridiculous, illegal law we still are enslaved to the Fed, and neither mainstream party has any intention of changing that. Thinking of becoming an expat, just looking for the right place to go. The options are not great but if I have to live with parasites and people who do not love freedom, I’ll find a place where there are not so may of them. 300+ million people, most of them trying to tell me how to run my life, is not any kind of freedom.
Keith | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
Well, it’s not as simple as that. Even if the court strikes down some part of the law—the individual mandate, for example—there will still be much for the legislature and the public to do extricate us from this octopus-like monstrosity.
A serious people, seriously committed to liberty, would recognize that the problems in our health care system, which are real, are all a result of misguided government interventions:
1) the employer-provided tax exemption from the war period, a major subsidy from those without such coverage to those of us who have it
2) the thousands of nitpicking mandates for “minimum” service plans across the 50 states
3) the prohibition against interstate competition in insurance plans
4) the openended fee-for-service model of Medicare, a program that has no proven health-outcomes benefits
5) the festering disaster known as Medicaid, which is already bankrupting state budges, which also has no demonstrable health-outcomes benefits, and which is nonetheless due for a major expansion under the current new law
6) a malpractice tort system that invites and guarantees massive distortions in medical practice.
And the list goes on. The greatest disaster in the generalized all-purpose disaster known as Obamacare is that it does nothing—literally nothing—to undo these systemic problems, but instead doubles down on them and makes a flawed system infinitely worse.
Voltaire in '08 | Mar 24, 2012 | Reply
Dear Voltaire in ’08:
Excellent points—thank you for the amplification!
With best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
Another part of the $1,000,000,000,000.00 (one trillion dollar) ‘health’ care budget is that we spend $100,000,000,000.00 (one hundred billion dollars) euthanizing cancer patients every year using very painful methods such as nuclear radiation and chemotherapy, which have a cure rate of about 3%. On average a cancer patient is worth about $200,000.00 to the medical industrial complex. Inexpensive, effective, natural remedies for cancer are generally illegal, and any doctor utilizing them will likely be prosecuted.
more here http://cancertutor.com/
Mark | Mar 26, 2012 | Reply
Voltaire 08 – you make some very crucial points.
As a law student with an emphasis on Constitutional Law and Theory, I can only add that Congress’ enumerated powers – and the commerce powers especially – have been deeply misconstrued, especially since the New Deal Era.
My hope is that the Court will finally put its foot down, but my realistic expectation is that it will not.
Clara Madison | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply
Another excellent, insightful and eye opening article by Mary Theroux. Should be required reading by every American. Today’s developments (the second of the three days of Supreme Court hearings) apparently went bad for Big Brother Barack and criminal collection of Useful Idiots. One wonders how low they will stoop now to insure that his signature piece of constitutional destruction remains in effect.
Mark Charger | Mar 27, 2012 | Reply