'Why Not ObamaCare?'

[Geee]

American Thinker:

Millions of people like ObamaCare. The idea of universal coverage appeals to many Americans, as does the ability to cover adult children on a parent's policy. Addressing the subject of pre-existing conditions and portability of health insurance are also considered to be major benefits by respondents in many polls.

The left has done a good job of selling the high points of the "Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act" (ACA) to a frustrated population, leading many voters to ask Republican candidates, "Why not ObamaCare?" We conservatives had better provide those folks with an understandable answer to that question, or we will live with the slow-motion horror of collectivist medicine for decades to come.

To explain the ACA, it isn't necessary to plumb the bureaucratic depths of the legislation. The bill itself is 2,700 pages, and the implementing regulations thus far written already exceed 13,000 pages, yet they cover only roughly 20% of the bill. By the time they are complete, the tax code will seem a mere pamphlet in comparison.

A compelling argument against the ACA can be made by discussing just three things: the professional backgrounds of the people who designed the scheme, the principles that underlie it, and finally, the nearly identical "sister systems" already in use around the world. Few Americans realize that the architects of the ACA have already implemented their ideas in other countries, providing us with an invaluable glimpse into our own future.

The architects of ObamaCare are all world-renowned experts on the rationing of care in a collectivist model. Dr. Donald Berwick, who was recess-appointed by President Obama to be the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (until he resigned rather than face Senate confirmation hearings), is a lifelong advocate of the single-payer collectivist model and a senior policy advisor to "The Commonwealth Fund," a left-wing American think-tank dedicated for the last 90-odd years to transitioning the American system to a nationalized model.

Berwick is one of the original architects of the rationing board for the British National Health Service, known as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, or by the Orwellian acronym NICE. One of Berwick's Commonwealth Fund acolytes, a former Harkness Fellow at the think-tank, is Kalipso Chalkidou, the current head of the international division of NICE. She travels the world teaching other nations how to implement the NICE model of cost-containment via the withholding of treatments and procedures.

Also playing on this field is Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. A bioethicist with the National Institute of Health, Emanuel is the designer of the "Complete Lives System," a formula for making decisions as to who will receive life-saving treatment and who will not.