Time to Pay an “End-of-Life Visit” to ObamaCare

Today is the six-month anniversary of the passage of President Obama’s signature legislation, what has come to be known as ObamaCare. The White House is feting this semi-anniversary, but few Americans are in a mood to join the celebration.

Obama, who can be thin-skinned when people disagree with him, was
downright irritated when the early polls showed that a majority of
Americans opposed his health care “reform” bill. He
criticized the polls as premature, saying “So
before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait
to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a
thought.”
(President Obama, April 1, 2010)

The problem with his argument is that the more Americans find out
what is actually in this monstrosity of a bill, the less they like it.
Polls conducted by Rasmussen
Reports
show that 55 percent of the public supported the repeal of
ObamaCare on March 25, just two days after its passage. Today, a
half-year later, the number of those favoring repeal has grown to 61
percent.

I am not one to call the President a liar. I have too much respect
for the office held by giants like George Washington and Ronald Reagan
for that. But I do believe that much of what Obama has said about his
own health care bill is simply not true. He claimed in Maine
that people could keep their own health insurance, in Maryland
that people could keep their own doctors. In Washington,
DC
, he promised that his plan would cut costs but would not lead
to the rationing of care. He has consistently claimed that it would
not fund abortions, and that its “end-of-life visits”
would not lead to euthanasia.

Six months later, all of these claims are being questioned by
taxpayers who see people losing their health care plans and paying
more for health insurance. More and more Americans are realizing that
they and their children will be stuck with the bill as healthcare
costs rise, and that they will be paying for “family planning
services” that include not just sterilizations and
contraception, but abortions as well.

Obama has repeatedly reassured nervous Americans that “if
you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to
take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in
the future.”
(President Obama, April 1, 2010) In reality,
millions of Americans will lose their health insurance in the coming
years as a direct result of ObamaCare.

On September 21, 2010, the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
announced 1.2 million
seniors will be forced out of the Medicare Advantage or Medicare
prescription drug plan that they currently enjoy next year. Add to
this the news that nHealth has dropped all its customers because of
ObamaCare and is going out of business, and that the American
National Insurance Company
will not sell health insurance to early
retirees, self-employed workers, and small businesses because of
ObamaCare. In fact, the worst blow of all may fall upon small
businesses. Regulations issued by the Obama administration may cause
up to 80 percent of small businesses to lose their current plans.

You will also be paying more for your health insurance in years to
come because of ObamaCare. Obama continues to maintain that “This
law will cut costs and make coverage more affordable for families and
small businesses.”
(President Obama, June 22) But the
reality behind the rhetoric is that ObamaCare is causing health
insurance prices to skyrocket. The Wall
Street Journal
reported that ObamaCare is causing rates to
increase up to 20 percent for some buyers. In Connecticut,
rates are increasing 18 percent for small businesses and 14.2 percent
for the self-employed, early retirees, and others who buy their own
coverage on October 1, 2010.

These increases are taking place not because of greed on the part
of insurance companies, as Obama’s media minions like to claim, but
because of the new mandates and regulations contained in ObamaCare,
all of which cost real money to comply with.

The elderly will bear the brunt of Obama’s deceptions, such as his
claim that “If
you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
(President
Obama, June 8, 2010) The reality is that doctors are already fleeing
Medicare in droves. In Texas
alone, more than 300 primary care physicians have stopped seeing
seniors in the last two years. When ObamaCare cuts Medicare payments
to doctors next year, even more doctors will bail out of a system that
overworks and underpays them, leaving millions of seniors without a
personal physician.

Costs are rising as well, flying in the face of Obama’s claim that
“over
time, costs will come down for families, businesses, and the federal
government, reducing our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the
next two decades. That’s what this reform will do.”

(President Obama, April 1, 2010.) We now know that, according to
President Obama’s own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),
ObamaCare will increase health care spending by 6.3 percent annually
and will cause health care to consume almost 20 percent of the our
nation’s GDP. In other words, ObamaCare will only pile more debt on
the mountain of debt that Obama’s other forays into socialism have
caused.

The easiest Obama claim to refute is his contention that ObamaCare
would not fund abortions. This is because he refuted it himself by
issuing an executive order explicitly forbidding the funding of
abortions through ObamaCare.

When I first learned of this particular ruse, I didn’t know whether
to laugh or cry. Because it is a ruse; albeit very clever one that
many people, apparently including “pro-life” Democrats
like Bart Stupak, fail to see through.

You see, if ObamaCare had not funded abortion in the first place,
then his executive order would be unnecessary. So the executive
order
constitutes evidence that, contra Obama, ObamaCare had
funded abortion all along.

At the same time, however, since federal law always and everywhere
trumps executive orders, Obama’s order is not worth the paper it is
written on. As a Harvard-trained lawyer, the President surely realizes
that his executive order will not stand up to the most cursory of
judicial reviews. Obamacare will then be used as Obama, Reid and
Pelosi intended, as a vehicle to promote and perform abortions.

It seems to me that our choice as Americans is simple: Either we
euthanize ObamaCare before it is too late, or it winds up euthanizing
us.

It is time to pay an “end-of-life” visit to ObamaCare.

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