The President and the Left have been speaking out about what they say is the “misguided focus of Republicans” on trying to eliminate Obamacare. Obama rants about how Republicans want to eliminate health care for 30 million Americans. Truth be told, he never wanted the Affordable Care Act and neither did the rest of the leaders of his team.
Some news organizations have been stringing together video of prominent Democrats speaking the truth. What they want is a single-payer, government-run healthcare system where insurance companies are obliterated from the healthcare process and every healthcare dollar runs through their hands and the hands of unionized government employees. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is the latest to state that obvious. He said Obamacare is “absolutely” a step toward single-payer.
This should not surprise anyone. Democrats have been trying to implement government run health care since President Franklin Roosevelt. In 1947, Harry Truman followed him with a proposal for a national health care system.
The Left is patient in achieving its goals, which they typically do incrementally. Just look at the timeline on how they have expanded the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program, which will give you an idea where they are heading with healthcare:
• Discussed adding Disability Insurance to Social Security in 1930’s
• First offered legislation in 1943; it did not get out of Congressional committee.
• In 1948, Social Security Advisory Board recommended adding benefits for the permanently disabled.
• In 1950, signed into law subsidies for state disability payments by states.
• In 1956, SSDI signed into law for workers between 50 and 65 years old. Children disabled before the age of 18 were also eligible. Established .5% tax and bill was signed by President Eisenhower reluctantly.
• In 1958, added benefits for children of disabled.
• In 1960, age restrictions were erased making anyone eligible for benefits.
• In 1965, made eligibility requirements easier for all applicants.
• In 1967, added benefits for widows of disabled.
• In 1972, reduced the waiting period for SSDI benefits, made it easier to qualify as a disabled child and added Medicare for SSDI recipients.
By time all these drip, drip, drip changes were made, the program expanded in 2012 to paying out $144 billion from $56 billion in 2000. The program is scheduled to run out of money in 2016. The program jumped from 4.3 million participants in 1990 to 10.9 million in 2012. The left slowly but surely (sometimes with the aid of Republicans) built the government program with the good intention of “helping” the disabled by diluting the requirements and giving away money to people who don’t actually meet the qualifications of what most Americans consider “disabled.”
Since early in the 20th century the Left has attempted to move toward socialized medicine. Though they did not succeed early on, they added Medicare in 1965 and Medicaid was actually created the same year. Both programs extended their reach and by 2011 the programs had expand to covering over 100 million people -- about one-third of all Americans. That was not good enough as cries were made about the people that did not have health insurance, despite having healthcare.
This is where the Left made a dual attack on the system. First, they required ever larger mandatory coverage for medical procedures, drugs, and tests that priced privately-held insurance at levels that made it unaffordable for many Americans. Obtaining simple hospitalization policies to cover for catastrophic situations became impossible as everyone was required to cover procedures they did not want or need. Of course, the finger was pointed at the insurance companies for the soaring costs and not the politicians.
Then anytime someone made common-sense suggestions for changing the system, those changes were shot down. For example, Republicans proposed high-risk exchanges to cover those who have pre-existing conditions. The issue of hard-working Americans not getting insurance had been a major concern. Leftists stopped any legislation from setting up these exchanges where the people who have the conditions would pay for their problems, but at more affordable rates through the exchanges.
President Obama is now running around the country touting the fact that his healthcare plan covers pre-existing conditions. His solution is unfortunately illusionary and delusional. The basis of the program is having healthy, young adults buy overpriced insurance policies laden with benefits they don’t need that will bring in the revenue to pay for the cost of covering older Americans with health problems. The Administration has now expressed high levels of concerns that the young adults will not be sucker punched like this, and the revenue will not be there.
What Obamacare does is establish an extremely complex program that will take years to comprehend and may never be fully understood as the related regulations pile ever higher and less coherent. In the end we know who the villains will be for this disaster – the insurance companies. The solution to the medicated masses urged on by the demagogues will be put it all in the hands of the government – “we can be trusted.”
As we are on the verge of full implementation of Obamacare we must realize this. They have already stated their intentions – Obama, Reid, Sebelius, Pelosi and more – all say they want single-payer. The only question left is why would you not believe them?