Speaking with his Official Sycophants at Vox.com, President Obama gave a valedictory for Obamacare, which will be heavily edited or tossed by the new Republican government. In the interview, he said that the only reason people didn’t like Obamacare was that they’d been misinformed – just like everything else Americans don’t like about his presidency, the problem is with them, not him or his policies. “The one thing I’m convinced about is the American people want to do the right thing. It’s just hard to get good information,” Obama said.
Well, yes.
From him.
This is the man who lied publicly and repeatedly about Americans being able to keep their insurance plans and doctors. This is the guy who crammed down a mandate on the American people with regard to health insurance while assuring them that he wasn’t going to hurt them in any way. And now this is the guy who brags about the increased number of insured, which is a direct consequence of the government holding its gun to consumers’ heads.
“When Obamacare has worked well,” Obama said, “it wasn’t attributed to Obamacare. And when there were problems, it was front page headlines.” This, of course, is always true of every government program. It is the responsibility of government actors to ensure that there are few bad headlines to go around.
But Obama let the cat out of the bag when it came to what Obamacare was actually designed to do: muck up one-sixth of the American economy with government involvement, then collapse that sector if government involvement is removed. “If there’s going to be a massive undoing of what’s one-sixth of our economy, then the Republicans need to put forward ideas of how they’re going to do it…and let the American people gauge: Is this going to result in something better than what Obamacare has produced?”
The irony here, of course, is that Obama’s lackey, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, said that Americans had to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it. But the greater message is that Democrats have no issues wading into the free markets with a sledge hammer, then declaring that the ruin around them is the fault of the free market. Obama said, “We can’t get health care for free. You’re going to have to pay for it one way or another: either the government [or individuals] pay more.” Except that government money comes from individuals, and you can’t magically spend your way to greater health care savings. But the intent isn’t to lower healthcare costs. It’s to make more Americans dependent. And Obama believes he’s accomplished that.
We’re about to find out.
Republicans have been half-hearted in their suggestions about dismantling Obamacare, suggesting a delay in removing its strictures as well as maintenance of key provisions of the law. That’s because they’re scared of the political consequences of removing Obama’s perverse structure. But if the free market is ever to have a chance to correct the actual market failures of government, now’s the time.