By Dave Andrusko
Talk about time flying. It seems like only yesterday pro-abortion Democrats were excluding anyone who had a different take on health care reform, preferring to hammer out the details in secret, so secret many of the members of their own party had only the vaguest notion what was in ObamaCare. In then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s memorable phrase, “We have to pass the bill before we can see what’s in it.”
So what can we say on the anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare? We’ve already talked about some of the specific components in parts one and two, so let me briefly use this space to offer a few overview points.
There were many, many excellent stories that ran today, and over the last week, for that matter. Jason Millman, writing for the Hill today, started his story by observing, “The battle over healthcare has barely slowed down one year to the day after President Obama signed the 2,700-page bill into law.”
For those who don’t keep close track, ObamaCare is under attack from multiple directions/sources—“ A year after his victory, Obama has seen the healthcare fight spread from the chambers of Congress to the states, the regulatory process, the judiciary and the court of public opinion,” in Millman’s words.
Why?
It is not some sort of orneriness, opposition for the sake of opposition, as many of ObamaCare’s proponents keep insisting. If it was just that, the polls wouldn’t show mounting opposition to ObamaCare and growing support for its repeal.
In Part Two, I focused on a couple of the excellent points made in an op-ed written yesterday by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). They carefully exposed the misrepresentations and distortions embedded in ObamaCare (aka the Affordable Care Act). Truth was the first casualty in the war over ObamaCare.
Pro-lifers oppose ObamaCare—then and now—because thanks to NRLC’s Federal Legislation Department and its Medical Ethics Department, we were never fooled by spurious assurances of abortion-neutrality or by promises that rationing was not embedded in the law’s DNA.
Specifically, ObamaCare is also in deep trouble for the very reasons outlined in a terrific op-ed that appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal (“ObamaCare and Carey’s Heart” at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576202203050970010.html. Written by pro-life Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wi.), it tells the story of how his daughter, Carey, was saved because her parents “had the freedom to seek out the most advanced surgical technique” to address a serious heart defect.
“I don’t even want to think what might have happened if she had been born at a time and place where government defined the limits for most insurance policies and set precedents on what would be covered. Would the life-saving procedures that saved her have been deemed cost-effective by policy makers deciding where to spend increasingly scarce tax dollars?”
None of us want to think of this. Alas, ObamaCare makes us think about the unthinkable which will become SOP if it is not repealed and replaced.
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