Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the
No. 4 House Republican, is walking back comments attributed to her that
ObamaCare can’t be repealed. But she’s not the only one suggesting Congress
merely make changes within the framework of the health law. Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the goal is to get the law “fixed.” It
seems many GOP lawmakers still haven’t read the law, or they’d know the
framework is corrupt.
Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speculated
Friday that repeal is unlikely because it will be “difficult to turn the clock
back.”
Nonsense. Even by the most inflated
administration claims, some 8 million people have signed up for exchange plans,
out of a nation of 318 million. ObamaCare is repealable, and should be replaced
with a plan to cover the uninsured and reduce costs.
ObamaCare’s authors paid lip service to these
goals but had an ulterior motive: forging a permanent Democratic majority. The
law creates a huge infrastructure for enrolling millions of people not just in
insurance but also for food stamps, housing assistance and other welfare
programs — and registering them to vote.
Here are the pillars of this corrupt
scheme. None of the minor fixes Republicans are discussing comes even close to
sweeping away this corruption.
Navigators and assisters: Instead of
government employees promoting ObamaCare and enrolling the uninsured, the law
(Sec. 1311) reserves these jobs for community activists, unions, community
health centers and other not-for-profits. Players include the NAACP, Planned
Parenthood and Service Employees International Union. Hiring these groups is a
way to fund the Democratic Party’s shadow army between elections.
Assisters sign up the uninsured for
non-health benefits and register them to vote. The National Association of
Community Health Centers identifies voter registration as a key part of its
mission.
The whole scheme recalls the days of
Tammany Hall, when local ward bosses got the poor and newly arrived whatever
they needed, in exchange for their votes. ObamaCare institutionalizes this
corrupt model and pays for it with your premiums.
Bailouts for insurers: ObamaCare rules make
it impossible for insurers to offer “affordable” plans and still cover their
costs. The premiums have to cover a long list of mandatory benefits as well as
$100 billion in taxes on insurers over the decade. Insurers also have to cover
seriously ill people for the same price as healthy people. Every state that
tried this “community rating” scheme has seen premiums soar, as the healthy
stop buying the plans.
To make ObamaCare seem affordable, the law
includes a bailout (Sec. 1342). It encourages insurers to price plans below
cost, with the assurance that taxpayer money will make them whole for most
losses at year’s end. In short, John Q. Public is paying to make a law look
affordable that isn’t. Worse, in January, the Obama administration sweetened
the bailout terms, though only Congress has the legal authority to do so.
The big lie is that this law is paid for.
Reductions in future Medicare spending pay for over half the law, including a
staggering 27 percent cut in payments to Medicare Advantage plans. That’s on
paper. But the administration is postponing the Medicare Advantage cuts to
dodge angry seniors.
Also postponed is the employer mandate,
which requires workplaces with 50 or more full-time employees to provide a
costly package of benefits. In anticipation of that mandate, employers are
holding their workforces below 50 or cutting hours below the law’s zany
30-hour-a-week definition of full-time. In the first seven months of 2013, an astounding
77 percent of hires were part-time.
With the employer mandate, the economy
cannot recover. Without it, millions more will need taxpayer-funded coverage
and ObamaCare collapses.
So much for the false sales pitch that
ObamaCare is paid for and repealing it would increase the deficit.
Attention, Republicans: Repeal this
“stinkburger” and replace it with a health-insurance safety net built on
compassion, not lies.
Betsy McCaughey is author of “Beating
ObamaCare 2014.”
