The Obama administration will rely on emotional anecdotes and incomplete data to help defend their signature law -- once its websites are fixed and people can actually enroll, that is. Critics will counter with reams of statistics proving that Obamacare violates its core promises. While empirical evidence is indispensable, it's also critical to showcase real people who are being actively harmed by the law. Meet this young, disabled mother from Allentown, Pennsylvania:
"It would take food out of our mouths to be able to afford these coverages."
Heartbreaking. Obamacare will force this woman, her husband and their five-year-old son to choose between obtaining coverage and putting food on the table. The law's "affordable" premiums will hike the family's bills by hundreds of dollars compared to their current plan. They can't afford the change, so a desperate decision awaits. This is why so many Americans have forcefully opposed Obamacare for so long. It's not about "hating" the president. It's not about racial animus. It's not about protecting the rich. It has nothing to do with any of the red herrings proponents toss out to sully and impugn opponents' motives. The truth is that this law hurts people, breaks virtually all of the major promises upon which it was sold, and is simply unaffordable to a federal government that's already facing a long-term debt crisis. HHS Secretary Sebelius, who told Americans this week that Obamacare's exchanges are "simple and user-friendly," was confronted with a potent dose of reality in Pittsburgh yesterday; the administration is now reportedly considering dismantling and rebuilding elements of the foundering online portals. These failures are so glaring that the media can't even try to gloss over them. CBS News ripped the Obamacare launch as "nothing short of disastrous" earlier in the week, and now NBC News is piling on:
“If it weren’t for the shutdown dominating the news, we admittedly would be hearing and covering a lot more about how things are going for these new health care exchanges, which were rolled out ten days ago,” Williams said. “Millions of uninsured Americans are being encouraged to go to healthcare.gov to sign up for coverage but it’s been a very rocky start.” ... “By most accounts the website has been a complete mess, locking up, crashing and kicking off potential customers,” Costello said. “Of the 260 people who tried to sign up at this Miami clinic in the first week, only a single person got through. One, from 260 attempts,” applications counselor Cristina Marrero said, laughing.
I'll leave you with a tip of the cap to Mary Katharine Ham. Check out her detailed prediction from November 2012: "This is a giant tech undertaking which will need to serve many localities with different needs, link existing technologies and personnel with a new, giant federal hub, and somehow make sure all of them work together to smoothly to guide consumers who have no idea what to expect in subsidies or services through a brand new web portal for health insurance. They have less than a year to accomplish this. It seems there has been no pilot program, no training, and no beta testing. This thing is ORCA on steroids." So right it hurts.