By Tom Toth
Senators and Representatives are working tirelessly to repeal the Affordable Care Act — sort of. Actually, most of them aren’t lifting a finger to repeal any portions of the law that are worsening the lives of everyday Americans.
In the meantime, special interests are getting priority insider treatment.
As of this week, corporate executives were added alongside international manufacturing giants, Congressional staffers, and labor unions as priority victims of Obamacare who will be bailed out from the disastrous healthcare reform law.
Since its covert early morning passage on Christmas Eve in 2009, Obamacare has been a collection of scandalous rollout disasters, shameless selective changes, and arbitrary delays. It seems like every corporate and special interest and their mothers have all been awarded an exception in one form or another from Obamacare.
Almost everyone has been exempted, that is, except for one vital demographic: middle class families.
The fact of the matter is that Obamacare is a bad deal for everybody.
Labor unions were among the first to figure this out, when the first-rate health insurance coverage that businesses were previously offering union members was replaced by the shoddy Obamacare exchanges. But, as large political contributors, they were given a multi-year reprieve from the law’s damaging provisions.
Congressional staffers, who are forced to enroll in the Obamacare exchanges under the language of the ACA, know intimately how bad forced participation in Obamacare would be for them and their families, which is why Congressional offices moved so quickly in a failed attempt to repeal the law for themselves.
Then, weeks before the individual mandate began imposing burdensome insurance limitations on both businesses and private insurance holders, Barack Obama pushed back the insurance mandate — for the businesses. People purchasing private insurance plans were left out to dry to the tune of 4.7 million insurance cancellations for the crime of purchasing insurance policies that Obamacare now deemed to be unworthy.
The medical device tax, a job-killing provision which costs General Electric alone about $100-$150 million annually, is on the bipartisan chopping block, promising to repeal Obamacare for giant corporate interests.
Now the Expatriate Health Coverage Clarification Act of 2014, a bill shielding insurance policies used predominantly by corporate executives working overseas and requiring access to international healthcare, promises to repeal Obamacare for expatriate businessmen.
But what about American families?
Reports indicate that Obamacare mortally threatens tens of millions of insurance policies and the overall quality of the healthcare system in the coming months and years, but even mainstream Republicans are seemingly giving up on the idea of repealing Obamacare for American families: as recently as last week, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, when asked whether Obamacare is here to stay, said that it “probably” was.
It’s easy for politicians to jump on board with niche interests affected by Obamacare and nitpick from portions of the law that appease K Street’s elite, but fighting for the American people is a much tougher and a thankless job — the job members of Congress are elected to do.
Every time Obamacare is repealed for societal elites and special interests, another powerful opponent to the law is appeased, serving as a functional loss to the national coalition of Americans determined to see the law abolished. Until the Affordable Care Act is removed from the United States Code in its entirety, the American people are on the losing side of Washington politics.
Obamacare, since its corrupt conception and shady passage, has been the enemy of millions of American families across the nation. There was never a day that the law was favored by a majority of the American people and continues to cost families greatly. Repealing the law may be a challenge, but it’s certainly not the most insurmountable one that faces the people’s Congress.
Obamacare is a bad deal for every American, and everyone deserves a full repeal, not just those who can afford Gucci shoed former congressional staffers to lobby on their behalf.
Tom Toth is the social media director for Americans for Limited Government.
