Parts of Obamacare have already been kicked to the curb (the CLASS act, the $600 thresholds for 1099 reporting). A number have been waived (illegally, I point out, for unions, “connected” cronies, training for the “navigators” has been cut along with background checks that would keep fraudsters out, the employer mandate and reporting, and a declaration that Congress is not subject to Obamacare like the rest of us) and some have been added (illegally, I point out, like the IRS now to provide tax credits for exchanges not run by the States). And we have certainly pointed out that employers have been cutting full time employees to part time and cutting hours to part timers so as to not trigger the Obamacare costs of either healthcare or fines. The government mandated state level exchanges where healthcare insurance is to be bought (I refuse to call them marketplaces because that would wrongly imply that there IS a true marketplace at work here) themselves are running way behind time and way over schedule to the point where they might be reduced to paper and pen. Doctors have already bailed on their practices to either become mere employees or wandering off to Galt’s Gulch (and we already are hearing noises that “other than doctors” will fill in the slack. As I pointed out here and Steve just did here, combined with the above, it seems that Obamacare is falling , falling fast, and falling hard. It seems that no matter WHERE one stands, it seems to be a house of cards that was erected on beach sand that is now collapsing into a sinkhole.
While many to most that have been against Obamacare from the get-go, thinking that it is the proverbial door shutting on our individual Liberties and Freedoms, are jumping for joy and like Steve saying “I told you so” at this chaos-in-process, I fear that this was figured out from the beginning and well may have been only a milestone on the timeline. Remember,
both Harry Reid and Obama have said that they were always in favor of a single-payer system. HHS Secretary Sebelius has said the same thing; Barney Frank, the former congressman from MA, said the same thing. This is not new – from the time of uber-Progressives Woodrow Wilson to FDR to LBJ, Progressives have hailed this as their crown jewel – to nationalize healthcare. This would, rightly in their eyes, finally vanquish that out-moded idea that Individuals could be or should be free of government interference. Instead, government would now be able to architect a “more efficient society” where each of us is merely a cog in the national machinery, each doing our appointed part (as if society was merely a simulacrum of the newfangled machinery that was all the rage at the start of the Industrial Revolution (and whence this foreign political philosophy hit our shores).
Failure? Chaos? Care impossible because of outrageous costs? Why, a veritable crisis – and a Progressives worth OUR salt (for they’d never think of using their own) just can’t let that alone, can they? No, I am fearing that what we are now seeing is a planned prelude to a total takeover. Obama will solemnly approach the podium, flanked by people trying to demonstrate gravitas, and sadly announce that for the well-being of the collective nation, the Federal Government will step in – as if this was a natural disaster that FEMA will clean up instead of a man-made catastrophe that has been planned and discussed for decades in dark corners of the Progressive universe.
Make no mistake – if the feckless and stupid scaredy-cat Congressional Republicans don’t grow spines and stones in a month and mount a last stand to defund Obamacare in a month’s time from hence, they will neither gain the Senate and will probably lose the House. WHY would the base vote for people who are more concerned with their own political well-being (Monty Pythonesque gyrations in their versions of “runaway to be French surrender monkeys fight runaway another day”) than that of the ideals on which this nation was founded? I know I keep pounding on the Founders vision, the ideals held at our start, but who else is fight for them? The Establishment Republicans? Hah! Or is that “Crying”?
Yet, if the Demorats do take the House and keep the Senate, my prediction is that they will gather around that podium at the same time and hand a single piece of paper of quickly passed legislation. With it, the seeds of the Congressional implosion in becoming totally irrelevant and handing its responsibility to the Executive Branch will come to fruition as well as the single payer gift to themselves. It will simply say:
“The President Shall”
Nothing else will be needed. Ben Franklin implied question “A Republic, if you can keep it” (?) will have been answered by Americans abandoning those that gave their all for that Republic – for it will be gone not with the thunder of guns, bombs, and planes, but by the quiet scribbling of a pen.
