Don’t Let Democrats Define The Obamacare Debate

[Geee]

The Federalist:

Obamacare is one of the great political disasters in recent American history. It is partly responsible for the wide-ranging losses of the Democratic Party over four consecutive elections, not to mention a fraying of the political order. You wouldn’t know this if you only listened to liberals, who are still trying to dictate the contours of the debate.

 

If the GOP reforms the health-care system, it will trigger a “humanitarian catastrophe,” according to the theatrical Jonathan Chait. Republicans are going to blow up the markets, according to Politico.

 

Jeez. In the lead-up to the passage of Obamacare, the entire Left kept referring to a bill that blew up the health-care system as “reform.” The word “reform” is a satisfying one. It means to make changes in (something) in order to improve it. You’ll notice that every policy Democrats propose is a reform. Wall Street reform. Energy reform. Liberals never “gut” markets. Or “repeal” existing law. Or “dismantle” anything. Or restrict “choices.” They reform stuff.

 

But if the health-care system was “placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers” back in 2009, what is it doing now? “We can’t wait.” Obamacare has inhibited competition, abet cronyism, and helped drive up premiums. Something must be done, even if Republicans decide to go at it unilaterally and circumvent the obstructionist party with parliamentary tricks.

 

It’s curious, though, how rarely media uses the term reform when Republicans propose significant changes to existing law. Government programs are treated, in tone and focus, as if they were a part of nature; some inevitable, evolutionary marker of progress. According to media, Republicans aren’t going to reform health-care insurance or Medicare as much as they intend to “dramatically overhaul,” or “slash,” or the worst possible thing ever, “privatize” it.

 

The latter is, of course, a half-truth the media constantly repeats, a liberal phrasing of what happens when you offer consumers a choice within a (formerly) coerced state-run program. There’s a stronger case that Obamacare socialized health care than there is that Republicans will “privatize” Medicare (not that there’s anything wrong with the latter). Rather than stripping something from Americans, a private option offers them a new option. While Democrats support fake choices in Obamacare and oppose real choices in Medicare, you rarely note this while reading our vaunted non-fake news outlets.

 

Whether a President Donald Trump goes for reform or not, Democrats’ histrionic rhetoric about the GOP’s radicalism on Medicare (here, here, here, and so on) and Obamacare simply doesn’t comport with reality. Especially when you consider that the Affordable Care Act was perhaps the most radical national reform ever passed. For the first time ever, every American was mandated to purchase a product in a private market — if you can refer to the virtual monopolies they created in those states as markets — and punished for failing to participate.