By Dustin Howard
RealClearPolitics, on the 6th anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law, listed 551 separate polls since 2009 on whether the American public approved or opposed the law. Of that number, with polls from all across the spectrum found that in 94 percent of the polls, Americans opposed the law; 5 percent of the polls supported the law and less than 1 percent tied. It is safe to assume that Americans don’t like this law, with the most recent Rasmussen poll reflecting a 54 percent opposition to it, and only 43 percent in support of it.
Americans have indeed found an entitlement they don’t like. What’s not to hate? At last count, better than half of the health care law’s co-ops have failed, with only 11 of 23 remaining. With billions of federal dollars still being hosed on to the flaming co-ops, their ashes remain a smoldering ruin.
With the Little Sisters of the Poor fighting for their religious liberty before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration is being confronted with the hypocrisy that they will exempt large corporations like Pepsi, Visa and Chevron from providing contraception, but not those with conscience concerns. Hobby Lobby has already won its liberty, now non-profits with such an objection must fight. And why? Because the doctrinaire inhabitants of the administrative state, namely the Department of Health and Human Services, deemed them unfit to opt out of what clearly conflicts with their faith.
Why would Americans support that?
May we also safely assume that Republican dominance of Congress means that they want rid of it? It is hard to believe that a policy so roundly disliked would have fearful members of that august body thinking there was a political disadvantage to dismembering it. Accepting the premise that the President will protect the law until he leaves in 2017, wouldn’t this be a great time to acquaint the 2016 electorate with the alternatives including repeal, and forever put to rest the notion that Republicans can’t implement a better plan?
The major Republican contenders, Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz have pledged to repeal and replace the most hated six year old in American history. Republicans in Congress would do well to consult both men on a plan they can agree on to use as a campaign issue, putting the lie to the notion that the GOP would displace those who are covered by the so-called Affordable Care Act. Give the American people a clear choice so the result can be a mandate for or against the albatross that is Obamacare.
In 2012, President Obama campaigned on the vagaries of what had not yet been implemented. Obamacare and it’s legion of bureaucratic handmaidens have had access to the national credit card, profits from the student loan nationalization and the hundreds of billions raided from Medicare, and they still can’t get it to work without massively raising premiums. To paraphrase Churchill, Republicans: Give the candidates the tools and they will finish the job.
It’s time to put this law out of our misery.
Dustin Howard is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
