OPINION

5 Things Obamacare Teaches You About Liberals

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

1) It's inherently dishonest: In many ways, Obamacare is a typical liberal program. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, there are two key differences. The first is that the Affordable Care Act was implemented on a short enough timetable for people to remember the promises that were made about it. Furthermore, because it is such an enormous program, it impacts a lot more lives. Otherwise, it's a standard liberal program that makes promises it never intends to keep and does more damage than good. Liberal programs usually have huge, yet very predictable downsides that are systematically hidden, ignored and downplayed because liberal ideas can't survive an educated, honest debate about whether they work or not.

2) Results are irrelevant: Barack Obama promised that if you like your insurance, you can keep it. He said the same thing about your doctor. He claimed Obamacare would REDUCE the cost of health care, save the average person money and provide universal coverage. Not only are all of those promises untrue, it's hard to miss the fact that no one on the Left SEEMS TO CARE. That's because whether Obamacare actually works or not is secondary to left-wing goals like centralizing government power, gaining more control over the American people and making liberals feel good about themselves. This is the rule, not the exception when it comes to liberals. Put another way, whether a liberal supports a program doesn't have anything to do with whether it works or not.

3) It penalizes success: Contrary to what you'd believe if you listen to the Left, 85% of Americans were perfectly happy with their insurance before the Affordable Care Act came along. Yet because of Obamacare, tens of millions of those people are going to lose their health insurance and most of them will pay more. In other words, our health care system was working just fine for the vast majority of Americans until Barack Obama took a wrecking ball to it. So, in order to help a relatively small number of people, liberals are perfectly willing to penalize Americans -- who worked hard, played by the rules and took care of themselves -- with much higher costs and lost plans. This is standard operating procedure for liberals who act as if doing well enough to live your life free of welfare, food stamps and government nannies is "cheating."

4) It doesn't work: A hammer is a good tool to use for pounding nails. It's not such a great tool to use in place of a screwdriver, saw or wrench. Government can be a good tool as well when it's used for the limited purposes for which it’s designed -- such as putting up street signs, building roads and forming a military to protect us from other nations. The problem with liberals is that they want to use their government hammer for every task imaginable instead of letting the free market provide the right tool for the job. You think a billing dispute with an insurance company is unpleasant? Wait until you're hashing it out with the IRS. You don't like to deal with your insurance company? Wait until you have a problem with your insurance and can't get it corrected until you get approval from a government agent. Our government is slow, stupid, arrogant and generally unfriendly to consumers. The more government you have in your life, the more unpleasant your life is likely to be.

5) There are no trade-offs: Liberals seem to be incapable of mentally comprehending trade-offs. So instead, they present Utopian visions of how life would look in a perfect world and offer that up as a political alternative to the messy, oftentimes unpleasant reality we live in. It would be fantastic if Santa Claus, Star Trek replicators, and genies were real, but when you seek heaven on earth, you're more likely to start wandering towards hell.