What Motivates Obamacare Supporters?

[Ed Hudgins]

What Motivates Obamacare Supporters?

By Edward Hudgins

October 25, 2013 -- Public policy issues should be discussed first and foremost in terms of their merits. The problem with discussing Obamacare is that most of its proponents seem immune from rational exchange. So we must ask, “What motivates them to support such a manifest public policy mess?”

Alleged ideals

Recall the rhetoric offered by President Obama in support of his plan. Obamacare would cover the supposed 49 million Americans with no health insurance. (Most of these individuals actually had access to health services or could purchase insurance if they wanted it.) Obamacare would bring down health care costs. It would give individuals access to a wider array of services.

And, Obama famously, loudly, and often argued that if you liked your current health care plan, you would be able to keep it.

So Obamacare mandated that all individuals, under penalty of stiff fines, purchase health insurance. Obamacare mandated that insurance companies beef up their coverage and that they could not charge different rates depending on the health of patients. Government-established exchanges would allow individuals who could not get insurance through their employers or as individuals to find policies to suit their needs. And the government would make sure everyone could afford it—by robbing the rich and healthy to subsidize everyone else.

Definition of disaster

As Obamacare is kicking in, individuals across the country are being kicked off of their current plans. In some cases employers simply can’t afford today's premium payments—payments that are being jacked up by federal mandates. So businesses are dropping coverage for employees or spouses, or making full-time workers part-time so they won’t have to offer insurance.

If Obamacare supporters admit the fundamental flaws in that failed program, they’d have to admit of the paternalist welfare state.

In other cases the insurance companies themselves are booting people out of the system; 300,000 were just dropped in Florida, and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will likely cancel coverage for 76,000 customers in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C area. Millions will likely lose insurance. Why are they being kickout off? Mostly, say insurance companies, because these individual plans no longer match the new Obamacare requirements—they don't cover a sufficiently bountiful range of benefits, for example.

Premiums for those still on insurance or seeking policies through Obamacare exchanges define “sticker shock.” In many cases the costs have doubled! And healthy young people, many of whom bought into the touchy-feely, turn-off-your-brain Obama rhetoric, are shocked at what they are expected to pay—the result of having to subsidize their less-healthy elders.

The HealthCare.gov site is a national joke, the definition of a disaster, worse than even the harshest critics imagined. Few folks are signing up through the Obamacare exchanges.

And doctors are disappearing from the market, retiring or running “cash only” practices to avoid the Obamacare regulatory mess.

Fatal flaws

So how can anyone with a straight face continue to sing the virtues of this fiasco?

First, Obamacare policymakers and apparatchiks place their own political power ahead of any actual results of a program; many supporters felt Obamacare didn’t go far enough, and favored a single-payer program run completely by the government. Subsidies to poorer individuals to allow them to purchase their own insurance—I’m not necessarily advocating this—and tax-exempt medical savings accounts might deal with much of the supposed problem. But this would leave those with a lust for power with too little to control. Better monumental failures like Obamacare than too much liberty for individuals.

Second, for Obamacare supporters to admit all of the flaws in the program would mean acknowledging the fundamental flaws in the paternalist vision of a welfare state with political elites like themselves showering largess on a population of individuals incapable of caring for themselves.

All of the evidence of Obamacare’s failures to facilitate health will do little to sway its supporters because they are morally sick. They are afflicted with “must-control-it-all-itis!”

For further information:

Video: How Obamacare Betrays Young People October 1, 2013.

Obamacare: RX for Crisis David Hogberg, March 7, 2013.

Obamacare’s War on Personal Responsibility Edward Hudgins, April 9, 2012.

Understanding Obamacare Compilation of related content by The Atlas Society.

[BaalChatzaf]

It is all a plot to force all but the richest Americans to accept single pay government provided health (so-called) care.

[Ed Hudgins]

Actually, as I mention, many of the supporters preferred straight-out government control of all health care in the United States. But I have some hope that magnitude of this mess will turn off enough Independents and even mush-for-brains young people who are being asked to foot the bill to understand that giving the gang of politicians who made said mess would be suicidal.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I agree with Bob and have my hopes in the same place as Ed.

After this turkey fails big time, I bet there is a HUGE PR persuasion campaign in the wings that will try to blame the entire thing on the fact that it was not a single payer system, with examples galore from other countries, and scripted storytelling.

Sort of like this from another area, except for health care, and with a lot more money and a lot more covert delivery behind it: 100 PRO-ABORTION STORYTELLING EVENTS ORGANIZED ACROSS COUNTRY.

These people (Progressives) have strong covert persuasion chops and it would be a mistake to underestimate the extent of their intentions and competence at using them. Don't forget that their target audience is the unwashed masses (which, in today's world, is equivalent to the empty-headed distracted masses with hi-tech communication toys).

Michael

[jts]

About what motivates Obamacare supporters:

If you don't agree with Obamacare, you are a racist. What does not agreeing with Obamacare have to do with racism? Dunno. If you talk bad about Obama, you are a racist. If you are opposed to tyranny, you are a racist. If you are opposed to Agenda 21, you are a racist. If you are opposed to fluoride in your water, you are a racist. If you want to home school your kid, you are a racist. If you oppose His Messiahship in any way, you are a racist. Doesn't matter that your reasons have nothing to do with the color of his skin, you are a racist.

[Ed Hudgins]

JTS - "Racism," of course, is now a word stripped of its original meaning, that is, someone who believes another race is inferior and should be discriminated against, on an individual basis if not by government. And no decent person wants to be thought a racist. So a liberal-leftist simply throws the word at anyone with whom they disagree as one would throw a rock at a pursuer, hoping it will slow them down or stop them.

Of course, the liberal-leftist believes that blacks especially cannot make it in a free system on their own and thus, need special help in perpetuity. Hmmm, sounds racist!