The ObamaCare Hustle

It’s easy to talk big and tough about cutting stuff when you KNOW your grand-standing is going to get vetoed by the president.  But it’s a whole new ballgame — as Washington Republicans are learning — when one of your own takes over at 1600 Penn.

In 2010, we gave the majority in Congress to Republicans with explicit instructions to kill ObamaCare with extreme prejudice.  SEVEN YEARS AGO.

Somehow, that got warped into “repeal AND replace.”  (Where, oh where, did anyone say anything about replacing ONE intrusive monstrosity with ANOTHER?)

Every election year, we got subjected to all kinds of tough talk from congressional Republicans that they voted UMPTEEN times to kill ObamaCare  – –but they were foiled by that dastardly Harry Reid and Comrade Barry. 

We gave them the Senate majority but Comrade Barry was STILL the excuse.

Now, we are SIX MONTHS into full Republican control of DC (and SEVEN years into ObamaCare).  And we’re still getting a whole lot of teeth-gnashing.

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia’s Shelly Capito are NOs on the idea of even repealing ObamaCare.  (They voted FOR repeal in 2015 — when Obama was still around.)  Capito stood up on the Senate floor the other day to defend her position, saying she didn’t come to Washington “to hurt people.”

Sweetheart, letting ObamaCare stand does exactly that.

We’re getting into rubber-meets-the-road territory here.  We’ve been told for decades that Democrats want to run your life, while Republicans want to free you from government.  Now, we have Republicans in Raleigh passionately defending government-subsidized crony capitalism, pork-barrel spending, and attacking private property rights. In DC, we have Republicans ignoring cries to cut spending, pay down the debt, and free us from the wrath of the government leviathan known as ObamaCare.  (We can’t even get a consensus from the DC crowd that it’s BAD to subsidize private businesses and plop new taxes on the American people.)

Capitalism and the free market are two concepts that paved the way for Republican victory in DC and around the country.  Now, it appears the new crowd in charge enjoys “governing” about as much as the old crowd does.  Two slightly different flavors of socialism, eh?

The foks in Raleigh are more impressed with their lobbyist paymasters than the folks who actually vote FOR them and they supposedly SERVE.  We’re always there for them when they need us. Where are THEY when we need THEM?

We’ve had a few heroes like Mark Meadows, Walter Jones and Rand Paul stand up for us on this issue. But they can’t get it done by themselves.

Wiping ObamaCare off the face of the Earth is key to the survival of our economy, our culture, and our country.  It’s done so much more bad than it has GOOD.

If national leaders REALLY want to do something about health care — focus on backing government out of the doctor-patient relationship.  (Listen to people like Rand Paul and Tom Price — two actual practicing doctors.)   Quality and Efficiency are inversely-proportional to the level of government regulation and oversight.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the doctor came to your house, and you could pay his bill in full right from your checking account.  I have a physician friend in private practice who tells me he has to employ three people JUST to shuffle all of the red-tape paperwork associated with government oversight and insurance.  

The best way to complicate something and jack up its cost is to drop a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats in the middle of it.  THAT is what we’ve done to health care.  THAT is why it costs so much and falls so short.

If the supposed conservative party was serious about keeping its promises to the American people, it would have had a plan to end this nightmare standing by READY for President Trump on January 20. 

The two different flavors of statism in DC are going to keep trying to pacify us with mealy-mouthed bovine scat while continuing to pander to the K Street pimps with the big checks.  The big question:  Will we continue to fall for it, and let them keep getting away with it?