Beware The Obamacare Legislative Trap

Stalin was able to collectivize agriculture in the Soviet Union because he was not accountable. Anyone who didn't like what he was doing or was hurt by it didn't matter. Stalin killed over 20 million of them.

The problem for the "progressives" in our country, as they attempt to take over and run health care, is that they can't dispense with all the people they are hurting - the young who have to subsidize the old, the middle class who are being massively taxed to subsidize Obama voters, those on medicare who will be hurt by the massive raids on that program, the religious who object to being made to violate their conscience, the workers who will be losing their jobs, or at least their working hours, over Obamacare, etc., etc. To the contrary, all those people can and will vote.

Usually, the progressive left gets their way because their pathological altruism sounds far more empathetic, and when whatever program they are pushing has negative consequences, it is so discrete in effect that they can successfully lie about it. The vast majority is none the wiser. Not so with progressive's penultimate overreach - Obamacare. It effects every American.

Now that Democrat legislators find themselves caught out, they are panicking, and therein lies a trap for the right. This from Redstate:

. . . They are about to consider, in the House of Representatives, legislation by Congressman Upton that would allow people to keep their insurance plans.

There’s a problem though. It is widely acknowledged that Congressman Upton’s legislation is more messaging than substance. His legislation does not have anything in it that can force insurance companies, in the topsy-turvy world of Obamacare, to keep insurance plans going.

But there is a plan than does. Senator Mary Landrieu has written legislation in the United States Senate that the Democrats love. It mandates insurance companies have to keep people on their present insurance. The GOP is supposedly against mandates and against government forcing private businesses and individuals into contracts they don’t want.

Here’s what is going to happen.

The House, with the help of a good number of Democrats, will pass the Upton plan and send it to the Senate. Harry Reid will substitute the Landrieu plan and send it back to the House. The House will be forced to either vote for the Landrieu plan or be characterized as siding with insurance companies against people.

In one fell swoop, the Democrats will have the GOP on record saving Mary Landrieu’s re-election in Louisiana by casting her as the one who saved Americans’ health care plans, and also getting on record as really being in favor of fixing Obamacare with the use of mandates.

In truth, Obamacare is not fixable. The only solution is to fully repeal it. The Republicans should not be helping Democrats with their re-election plans, which is all the are doing with Upton/Landrieu.

The GOP is walking right into the trap.

The GOP could not be better positioned right now. Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare. And indeed, it was just a few weeks ago that Ted Cruz and the House shut down government explicitly over Obamacare. And as countless people have noted, Obamacare can't be fixed, it must be repealed. The GOP must continue to demand it - and nothing less.

My suggestion to Republicans is simply refuse any bill that is a fix to Obamacare, short of getting a major, major capitulation in return, such as tort reform, and even then, only in return for a short term fix. Beyond that, alter anything such as the Upton bill with riders that would bring an end to Obamacare.

The only other caveat to that is that Republicans need to unanimously agree on their own plan for medical insurance reform and attach it as an alternative. Up to this point, while there are Republican plans out there, they are individual proposals without a single consolidated plan that all support.

Two, the right has been largely silent, preferring to dwell on the evils of Obamacare rather than their own proposed solutions. This has been a tactic to keep all attention on Obamacare and not to give the left a chance to rail against the right's ideas. We are fast approaching the time when Republicans need to take the next step and present their consolidated plan as an alternative to the obscenity that is Obamacare.

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