Fresh from conservative oppo group America Rising, please enjoy this montage of top Democratic candidates defending the so-called "Affordable" Care Act prior to this week's disastrous data dump from the Obama administration -- which only confirmed what independent analysts and news reports had been anticipating for months. This law is failing on its own merits and harming millions of Americans. Democrats own the mess they've made, and shouldn't be given the opportunity to double down on it. Watch all the way to the end, for two reasons. First, each candidate and public official featured in the video should be held to account at the ballot box in November (along with virtually every Democratic House candidate in the country), and second, the clip's final star is the person who is arguably one of the very few people just as responsible for this imploding fiasco as President Obama:
Yes, as we've been noting for quite some time, Obamacare was originally Hillarycare -- a fact that makes her empty promises to "fix" the law ring especially hollow. The RNC is out with a new video tracing Obamacare's provenance to Mrs. Clinton, showcasing a killer soundbyte of the woman herself claiming credit for the law:
Among the many personal profiles we've seen and read about individuals and families decimated by the law's crushing costs is this new offering by my friend and conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham. Obamacare has impacted her family in a very major way, hitting a trifecta of catastrophically broken promises. I'll let her explain:
When President Obama sold Obamacare to the American people, he promised three things. 1) That we could keep our plans if we liked them. 2) That the new system would offer competition between great options through an Obamacare marketplace, and 3) That our premiums would go down. Not “go up slower” or “go up but eventually go down,” but go down— $2,500 was the figure. The letter I got last week is a betrayal of every one of those promises. I did not get to keep the plan I liked. The new system does not offer competition between great options through an Obamacare marketplace. And my premiums have gone up more than 150 percent in two years...I have many blessings, two of which are the means to pay for health insurance and the good fortune not to need much of it. As a result, in the post-Obamacare world, I am a prime gouging target. I’m seeing a 96 percent increase because I am healthy, unsubsidized, and getting fewer and fewer choices. My health care company abandoned the lowest-tier Bronze option entirely in its attempt to stay solvent, funneling me into a Silver plan with higher levels of care I don’t need at a higher price I don’t want. My individual deductible is more than two times the high deductible on my old “junk” plan. My family’s deductible is ten times what the IRS defines as a high deductible. I now pay a high premium for a high-deductible plan, while also paying co-pays and out-of-pocket costs, meaning my plan is both junkier and more expensive.
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Liberals respond to such stories by insisting that they can "fix" the law with even more spending and government control -- via insurer bailouts, imposing harsher tax penalties to punish people who can't afford the law, and implementing a government "option" that they'll privately admit will destroy America's private insurance system. Another hot talking point is that while unfortunate, these Obamacare cost spikes only affect a relatively small number of American consumers, so everyone should just chill out. This is a far cry from the "win/win!" panacea Democrats peddled to Americans throughout 2009 and 2010. It's also pitiful spin, for reasons I explained in a mini-tweetstorm:
Re: the Left's new #Obamacare talking point that the % of Americans (getting slammed) in the exchanges is relatively low... 1/
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 26, 2016
Partially true bc enrollments are MILLIONS of people short of initial projections. It's hurting fewer ppl bc fewer ppl are participating 2/
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 26, 2016
And the only way the law "works" is if a bunch of young, healthy ppl sign up, which is much less likely w/ big cost hikes! 3/
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 26, 2016
So the "small % impacted" spin only helps underscore the trouble in which failing #Obamacare finds itself. 4/
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 26, 2016
And the Left's "solution" of a government option would guarantee a lot more consumers would be dumped into the #Obamacare mess. 5/
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 26, 2016
Part of the reason the number of people directly impacted is "relatively small" or whatever is that millions of would-be Obamacare consumers have eschewed the law, due to lack of affordability. Rather than downplaying Obamacare failures, this spin actually accentuates its failures. This new lefty line reminds me of how Democrats -- unable to tout lower costs or other major honored promises -- beat their chests about the millions of people signing up for coverage as "evidence" that the law was working. First of all, more than half of the marketplace enrollees were previously insured (and kicked out of their existing arrangements, thanks to Obama's shattered pledge). Secondly, enrollment projections have been revised way, way down. And most importantly, you don't get to brag about people signing up for a product that they are literally required by law to sign up for. Legions of eligible consumers still haven't because they just can't afford to comply with the "Affordable" Care Act. I'll leave you with the Free Beacon's video round-up of Democrats' violated vows, which kicks of with a short clip of CBS News anchors expressing shock and astonishment at how Obamacare's rates could possibly have risen like this. Spoiler alert, guys: It's because the law's core functionality and model is fatally and predictably flawed -- as many of us have known since it was first proposed. The Pelosi bit its amazing:
The #Obamacare Death Spiral Is Upon Us.... https://t.co/FNI754G63E pic.twitter.com/3PmJTisOzP
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) October 25, 2016
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