The Republicans have hit pay
dirt. Their only issue – attack Obamacare is close to hitting the jackpot or so
they pray, hope and believe. Their 500 to 1 shot is leading in the homeward
stretch and they have Obama on the ropes – just to mix a couple of metaphors.
(Blogs: Obamacare and Obamascare Explained, 11/28/13. Obamacare, Elections and
Women, 11/7/13 and Obamacare: Politics, Hypocrisy, Lies and Facts 10/24/13).
One of Obama’s key messages that you can keep your old insurance if you so
desire has not materialized for many. Millions of Americans have received
letters from their insurance companies terminating their current
insurance. The politicians and the
media, without any thought as to why this occurred have unleashed unprecedented
vitriol on Obama. They are calling him a liar and disgraced.
The Republicans are calling
Obama an unashamed liar. This is really heavy stuff in American politics.
America is a secular country, but as the former Chief Rabbi of the United
Kingdom, Jonathon Sacks, has observed that every American President has mentioned G-D in one of
his inauguration speeches. So while there is disrespect and even hatred for
Obama the convention is that the Office of President is respected with almost a
divine reverence. So much so that just a few years ago when a Republican, Joe Wilson, screamed out during an Obama State of the Union speech, “You are lying”,
he was censored by all and sundry including his own Party. So while the
President is not quite the Pope, in terms of reverence it is almost a photo
finish. -just to sling in yet another metaphor.
That was then and this is
now.
OBAMA THE LIAR
No lesser luminary than Dick
Cheney, former Vice President and purveyor of the misinformation that led the
USA to go to war on Iraq, as he swore that the latter definitely had weapons of
mass destruction, (reverence forbids Jay H Ell to call this a lie), is leading
the choir that Obama is a liar. Conferring on Cheney, Vice Papal status, Jay H.
Ell has to believe that the fact that his daughter is running as a Tea Party
candidate for the Senate has nothing to do with the immediate past Vice
President’s unprecedented behavior towards the sitting President, Obama. Anne Romney, who incidentally has
neglected to comment on her husband’s lie that he never recommended Romneycare
for the whole country, has echoed Cheney’s claim.
Then of course there are
there is the slew of legislators that either label Obama a liar or claim that
he deliberately and knowingly mislead the electorate. This band, as one might
expect is lead by Ted Cruz.
As usual the unelected
megalomaniacs in the media are shouting the odds. One would expect rants from
Rush Limbaugh but when a “respected” intellect such as Charles Krauthammer
joins the party you have to know this is developing into a free for all. He
accuses Obama of “mendacity, paternalism and subterfuge”. He is paternalistic
because he does not give people what they want. Rather Obama decides their
insurance i.e. the Affordable Health Care Act, (AHCA)! Krauthammer seems to
forget elections, votes in Congress and Supreme Court decisions that have
endorsed the AHCA.
But Obama is more than a liar
he is also washed up, disgraced and discredited.
OBAMA WRITTEN OFF AS A
DISASTER AND A DISGRACE
In this day and age of 24/7
media hysteria and a bloggosphere, that knows no bounds, the Obamacare
insurance mishaps are being blown up to catastrophic levels. This is Obama’s
Katrina. This is Obama’s Iraq.
Watergate and the Iran Contra scandal are also comparisons. A media
consensus is that Obamacare is part of the curse that afflicts Presidents who
win a second term. The 44th President has also been declared a lame duck.
How one can compare Bush’s
indifference on Katrina where nearly 2000 people died or Bush and Cheney’s
misleading the USA into a war where tens of thousands died and are still dying
with a failed website and an unintended consequence of the sloppily written
AHCA, heaven only knows? To liken Obama’s actions to a Watergate, where there
was a Presidential cover up of burglaries of political opponents and where
several members of his Administration went to jail, is political hyperbole
beyond the imagination. The Iran Contra scandal, where, on the Republican icon
Reagan’s watch, arms were sold to Iran to get hostages released and then the
money obtained used to illegally fund rebels in Nicaragua, is now compared to
Obama’s failure to see that in his 2000 page AHCA he did not legally preclude
insurance companies from terminating policies.
All of the above travesties
are thus compared to glitches that Obama is experiencing in trying to get
healthcare for everyone! The mob behavior is obscene and an indicator as to the
depths that political discourse has sunk to in the USA.
The Media
The media must take plenty of
responsibility for feeding into this pig fest and reinforcing these comparisons
and embellishing them without putting them in any perspective. CNN, that
paragon of journalistic virtue, daily, runs stories on television and on its
web page of second term presidents who were sunk by scandals and disgraceful
behavior such as Katrina, Iran Contra and Obamacare. CNN are just one of many media outlets that are using
this hyperbole. For some in the mass media there is only one standard and that
is readership or viewer ship. Generally speaking, they have abandoned their
role as the valued fourth estate in favor of selling soap.
The frenzy has even spread to some Democrats who were
ready to abandon Obama if the “mess” had not been resolved by Obama’s executive
order. Bill Clinton, who should have known better but was running cover for
Hillary, said Obama must keep his promise and change the law if necessary – knowing
that, that was impossible at the time. Some Senate Democrats have drafted a
bill to change the law and if they succeed it will compound the problem.
ANATOMY OF AHCA’S INSURANCE
MESS – A FAIRY TALE
Once upon a time, there
was a President named Obama who lied to a nation and perpetrated one of the
dastardliest acts by throwing people off medical insurance while pretending to
help them. It is a fact that the AHCA is merely a subterfuge for entrenching
big government and socialism.
Read below of the spin of the socialists.
The Story
Introduction
Obama, correctly, took the
ultimate responsibility for the insurance problems associated with the
application of the AHCA. Indeed he should have seen to it in the first place,
that insurance companies could not have terminated plans for anyone. It is
inexcusable that he didn’t.
However there is evidence in mitigation and exculpatory
information that would negate that this lapse defines him as a liar and a
rogue. (Jay H. Ell discussed some of these factors in his blogs referred to
above).
How to Pass a Bill in Washington
Anyone will tell you that in Washington to pass a Bill,
as expansive as the AHCA, especially in the field of medicine where one in
every six dollars in the USA is spent, you need allies. - allies with deep
pockets. There are so many vested interests in this goldmine of medical care
that it is a question of recruiting allies that interfere least with your
objectives and have enough resources to help you fight off the other sharks.
This has proved an impossible task as for over a century American Presidents
have tried and failed - failed that is until Obama came along. The most recent
failure was under the Clintons whose comprehensive plan was kyboshed by the
whole cabal including the American Medical Association, (AMA) opposing it
Obama recruited two powerful
lobbies, the medical insurance lobby and the AMA. By doing this he could turn
this into a joint government and private industry venture with the doctors in
toe. The insurance companies would benefit by more enrollees, the doctors would
benefit by having more paying patients and Obama would benefit by using a
Republican model. (He also hoped by using the Republican Heritage Foundation’s
model, Romneycare, he would garner Republican support!).
The AHCA
First of all it must be made quite clear that the AHCA
states, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed that an individual terminate
coverage. …in which such an individual was enrolled on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
Thus in the AHCA it was
explicit that you need not change your insurance if you were happy with your
present one. Obama consequently reassured again and again that that was the
case. The assumption was that the only variable was the rights of the consumer.
No provision was made, in the sloppily written AHCA, to stop insurance
companies from terminating a plan that consumers were on that was initiated after
2010. The problem was that there
was a three-year delay after the
enactment of the AHCA so insurance companies could legally terminate plans
put into place after 2010. The act should have stated what was intended, namely
that the no one could be kicked off any existing insurance plan, period. There
is not one jot of evidence that Obama foresaw this mess. His subsequent
repeated promises could have not been made to set himself up and reinforce that
fact that he was a liar. Rather his promises are more in sync with what he
believed the AHCA intended.
That he should have covered
every base is another matter.
Obama delayed to correct the mistake in the AHCA
Obama should have immediately corrected the situation
when the news of the expulsions was announced as he finally did with an
executive order to attempt to enforce the insurance companies to comply with
the spirit of the Act. However he hoped to ride the storm without annoying his
key partner - insurance companies. So a strangely tentative Obama, first half
apologized, then fully apologized and finally issued the executive order.
Does the mistake matter?
In the final analysis it does
not really matter as the AHCA is set up to provide better care at a cheaper and
sometimes subsidized cost. If the insurance company does not reinstate his or
her policy the consumer will rush to the site, which still has 4 months to run
and really test the system. The Governors of Washington, Kentucky and
Connecticut have just issued a report on the success of Obamacare in their
States. They accepted full subsidy to increase Medicaid and they have recruited
large numbers of uninsured. They state that the real reason they have been so
successful is that all parties and institutions have pulled together to make
this work. Presumably those States have patients who have been thrown off
insurance schemes too. Recruitment is picking up especially in the States that
have cooperated with the Obamacare provisions.
Ultimately, the jury is still
out on whether acceptable recruitment will occur or not but already
certain insurance companies are putting tentative adverts for the business.
What is crucial for this whole exercise is whether the website will be
functional on November 31st as scheduled.
End
of Story.
And that children is how that nasty lying Obama became the
worst President in living memory with an act so dastardly that Watergate, the Iraq
war deception, Iran Contra and Katrina pale by comparison. The underlying moral
dear little ones is don’t mess with the status quo and let 45,000 people die as
they chose not to have insurance. Also children we need to keep the bankruptcy
court busy with their main business -medical bankruptcies or otherwise several
jobs will be lost. As you read above some grown-ups just don’t understand!
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Obama
Obama needs to take the
situation by the scruff of the neck and show some leadership. He needs to tell
the Congress, Democrats included, that they must stop wasting their time
debating Obamacare, as it is a fact of life. If any Act should come along to
his desk modifying it he will veto it. He needs to send a message to the
insurance companies that they need to get with the spirit of the law and honor
his executive order. If he is not
in the web room every morning demanding that Sibelius show progress, he should
be, as most importantly he needs to get his website working. Then he can spend
his energy doing what he does best – campaign on the virtues of Obamacare.
After all he won two elections on the strength of it.
This is crunch time for
Obama. While history will never link him with Nixon, George W, Cheney and
Reagan, he will have to answer as to why he had the audacity to run against
Hillary if he did not have the stomach to follow through. There is a chasm
between being an activist and being a politician. He chose to be the latter and
in so doing axed a real politician, Hillary, who would not have his heartache
and dilemmas. He owes it to those who had faith in him to deliver and not wimp
away into oblivion.
Republicans
This is crunch time too for
the Republicans. They have risked all on destroying Obamacare. With their
windfall they doubled down. They are simply the anti Obamacare party. The
advantage of this approach is that they keep the party united. The Republicans
can postpone their internal fight for another day. All their financial
resources, which at the end of the day are far more than those of the
Democrats, will be used to attack Obamacare, in an attempt to win the November
midterm elections. The New York Times ran a story of the Republican “play book”
how to suppress Obamacare and use it to retake the Senate and hold the House.
What if Obamacare even half delivers?
What if Obamacare does not
fail or does reasonably well? Do they carry on ad nauseam attacking the website
and the insurance “betrayal”? Also there maybe a backlash in States where the
Governors boycotted and obstructed Obamacare and millions remain uninsured.
There are three States with Democratic Governors, Kentucky, Washington and
Connecticut that have had spectacular responses. Also the 14 States that
accepted Obamacare have had more than expected recruitment these past two
weeks.
How does Obamacare attacks
recruit the groups that oppose the GOP.
Also how does this focused policy of just attacking
Obamacare help the Republicans with the youth, women, Hispanics, the Gays and
African American demographic groups? Other than voter suppression they are
doing nothing about this growing demographic threat to their future. Voter
suppression of these groups is only going to alienate them further and make it
almost impossible to win them back.
Obamacare is not the only
string to the Democratic bow. They are promoting the issues of the
aforementioned groups as well as promoting the well being of the ninety - nine
percent. The economy is improving, the stock market is going gangbusters and
the job numbers are generally better.
Jay H. Ell believes that the
Republican preoccupation with Obamacare will, ultimately do them more harm them
good. But not to worry in 50 years time they will be claiming it as their own
as they do now with Social Security and Medicare.
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