A Challenge

A friend forwards an email issuing a challenge - which I accepted.

Sorry, this is long, but I got wound up and the allegations that follow need background to properly address.

A friend shared my Merry Cromnibus post with an email group of his and one of his Democrat friends took issue with the post - and strangely enough decided to use Obamacare as a defense of how wonderful and virtuous massive Democrats and their spending are.

I always enjoy getting called a hypocrite by hypocrites and then they go on to prove what hypocrites they are by putting it in writing.

In perfect alignment with the left’s thinking, the respondent cheers things from which he personally benefits for which other people are forced to pay.

His friend asked that we “Argue with this if you can”:

1. Begs the question that the ACA was an improvement to health care that Republicans had zero to offer in response, and still don't, other than "no", a decade and a half later. What a "concept".

2. And don't ever tell me that "it was passed without a single Republican vote", because that's not true. One patriotic statesman, who suffered terribly in defense of our country, cast the vote that allowed it to pass. That may have been the Republican party's finest hour of the 21st century.

3. The ACA allowed us to keep our kids on our policy until they were twenty-six, with full, robust coverage that they never could have afforded on their own.

4. The ACA protected people with pre-existing conditions, allowing me to consider a better provider if I can find one. With diagnosed heart failure, I would have been SOL if I wanted or needed to change providers.

5. The ACA removed the cap on lifetime benefits. Without it, I would have exceeded my limit years ago and would be on the hook for the half million or so that my insurance covered 99% of. None of us are poor, but that would have changed my lifestyle more than the heart condition!

6. Obama's pro-capitalism action to get the banks out of the student loan business saved us and our kids almost $10,000 in interest over our lifetimes.

So, here is my point-by-point response:

1. Funny that his friend chose Obamacare as a hill to die on, especially since O-Care has failed at every objective it was allegedly designed to achieve. Over a decade since the oxymoronic named “Affordable Care Act” was passed, the very party that distorted the insurance markets are now pro-shooting insurance company CEOs (40% of young Americans think that is an appropriate response to denied claims) and Democrats nationwide are attacking insurance companies for issues they still claim the ACA fixed. Obamacare was never about health care; it was about government getting its tentacles in one seventh of the American economy, never addressing competition, rather it just used taxpayer subsides to mask the true cost of insurance. Spoiler alert, data shows that insurance rates and deductibles are still going up – as are the subsidies (According to the Congressional Budget Office, in 2023, federal subsidies for health insurance under Obamacare, were estimated at $1.8 trillion, accounting for 7.0% of the U.S. gross domestic product). ACA exchanges have seen record enrollment due to what? Increased subsidies and pandemic-related coverage initiatives. In 2021 and 2022, the passage of the American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, a) increased and extended subsidies, capping premium costs at 8.5% of income for most enrollees, b) made any middle-income individuals who previously did not qualify for subsidies are eligible, and c) shocker of all shockers, government’s (the taxpayer’s) subsidy spending has significantly increased.

2. It is also interesting he ascribes all the virtue of the Democrats in the Obamacare passage and credits an unknown Republican “statesman” for its passage. I don’t know to whom he refers because no Republican Senators voted for its initial passage and in the House, only one Republican voted for it – Joseph Cao, a one term representative from Louisiana. Never mentioned are the thirty-nine House Democrats who voted in opposition. John McCain did shiv the GOP in the back when he enjoyed his made-for-TV moment by marching to the front of the Senate chamber and melodramatically gave the “thumbs-down” to stop the repeal of the ACA in 2017.

   To ascribe such elegant and complete virtue on the part of munificent and magnanimous Democrats, one must forget the Machiavellian maneuvers that took place prior to the initial ACA vote on Christmas Eve in 2009. There was the somewhat miraculous election of Republican Scott Brown, who won Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat. Brown’s vote would have stopped the 60-vote supermajority required to pass Obamacare, but he was not seated until February 4, 2010 – too late to cast a vote on Obamacare, so the Democrat appointed to finish out Kennedy’s term, Democrat Paul Kirk, cast a vote in favor.

   Remember also how the Democrats changed the law in New Jersey so that they could drag the ancient dinosaur Frank Lautenberg out of the dustbin to replace Robert “Torch” Torricelli – who was doing time for corruption. Of course, they changed the rules right back after Lautenberg was appointed so the Jersey GOP could never do it that way.

   Also, and in the grand tradition of Deep State lawfare, perhaps the greatest damage to the GOP effort to block Obamacare was the fraudulent 2008 prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. In this case, the prosecutors at the DOJ and the investigators at the FBI committed various illegal acts, up to and including the withholding of exculpatory evidence – but Stevens’ exoneration came too late. As a side note, you might know the judge in the Stevens case from the persecution of General Michael Flynn – Emmet Sullivan.

3. A person at 26 should be able to pay for their own insurance – through a job. This is four years past when they should have graduated college, all it does is promote adult childhood and increase the cost of the insurance plans parents carry. Someone bears the cost of covering the risk for four extra years. Young people use health insurance the least because, well, they are young and typically healthier at that point in life than at almost any other, so when they have issues, they are catastrophic, and the insurance actuaries know that – that’s why premiums went up.

4. When insurers were forced to cover pre-existing conditions, the product ceased to be insurance and became an entitlement that premium payers (or the government through taxpayers) had to pay – increasing the cost across the board. Insurance is defined as risk mitigation and if something is known, it is not a risk – it has already happened, so this was simply to force insurance companies to pay for known issues – which is not insurance – and again, somebody must pay.

5. The same goes for eliminating lifetime caps. Somebody must pay for those, and that means either the premium payer or the subsidizer (the government – the taxpayers again). There have always been insurance policies to cover the expense risk beyond standard policy limits, but they were expensive for a reason – older people and people with known health issues are more likely to exceed the caps. If you don’t think insurance companies priced this extra risk into their offerings, you are ignorant or a Democrat.

6. As to the assertion the Obama regime’s takeover of student loans is “pro-capitalism, I can’t understand how it could be. In my lexicon, government taking over a private market is anti-capitalistic by any definition.

He goes on to say, “For these items alone, I believe that Obama will find a favorable home in the history books” and that no “recent Republican president has delivered such direct, long-term benefits to people…” and “Now it's oligarchy on full, shameless display. Maybe Mr. Smith could share with us his thoughts on that.”

1. Thanks to his hand up the back of the Biden marionette and his involvement in the disastrous 2024 election campaign, Obama’s “favorable home” in the history books will be in the back.

2. Republican presidents work to deliver economic results, not programs that are gifts to target constituencies. I’m not happy with their love of spending, but Republican “programs” are not “programs” per se, they are broad based economic expansions that benefit everyone.

3. As to the “oligarchy”, this comment is in the wake of an administration that featured a president who was incompetent at the beginning and non compos mentis at the end and we still do not know who has been running the American government since 2021. It sure as hell wasn’t Biden or Harris – so my assumption is there is a Democrat oligarchy behind it.

That’s how the facts lay out - as I see them.

Republicans are not perfect and are not the complete solution to America’s problems, but the progressive, postmodernist, Democrat ideology sure seems to be at the root of them.