It’s not going to just “work out.”

obamacare

Among those that still support the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, the talking point has become, “What if it all just works out?”

And thus we arrive at the pass at which the entire rationale for annexing one-sixth of the U.S. economy is reduced to wishful thinking.

There is not a shred of real-world evidence to support the thesis that Obamacare is going to work out. Every single national poll points to the inescapable conclusion that the American people have figured this grim fact out. The measure was not popular to begin with, having never enjoyed majority support. But now that abstract political argument is turning into real-world consequence, what support Obamacare had is rapidly eroding.

Even reliable Obama constituencies such as labor unions have turned against the Affordable Care Act. Labor bosses such as the Teamsters’ Jim Hoffa and the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, both of whom poured money and support into the Obama machine, have figured out that Obamacare is going to cost their members more money while reducing the quality of their benefits. The union bosses are now busy demanding that President Obama carve them out some specific relief.

The impact on small business is particularly acute. For the first time in our history, small businesses are hoping to become smaller rather than larger – something hitherto antithetical to the American ethic.

This is happening because growing a business to the point that it needs 50 or more fulltime employees can be the kiss of death. Examples of small businesses seeking to shrink rather than grow include restaurant franchisees and service providers such as car washes and dry cleaners. At no time did the financial models of enterprises such as these support providing their employees with health insurance. The delayed-but-not-gone Obamacare “employer mandate” will impose costs on these employers that cannot be passed on to customers, rendering the businesses unable to remain financially viable. Philosophical arguments about the “right” to quality health care are one thing. But math is math. These businesses have reacted by either shrinking their fulltime payrolls or by carefully avoiding the hiring of the 50th  fulltime employee.

It is no mere coincidence, then, that since the first of the year, more than three quarters of all jobs created in the United States have been part-time jobs – an unprecedented statistic.

Small business owners that have historically provided health insurance find themselves in a terrible squeeze. This observation is acutely personal because I am a small business owner and I do provide my employees with health insurance.

I am now in the position of being forced to pay more in premiums to meet the Obamacare-mandated “minimum value standards.” The meeting of those standards comes at the price of sharply increased premiums. In the interest of my employees I will swallow as much of that increase as I can, resulting in less profit available for expansion and capital investment. What I cannot absorb I will pass along to my employees, resulting in a de facto pay cut.

(I can’t wait for that employee meeting in the conference room. Perhaps I’ll buy everyone lunch.)

And then there are the doctors. Obamacare is accelerating their retirement. The American Academy of Family Physicians reports that more than a third of family doctors say they plan to quit practice in the next five years. Family doctors constitute the keystone of medical services delivery and their absence will be keenly felt. Medical schools are saying flat out that they will not be producing graduates in anywhere near the numbers adequate to take up the slack.

Many – some say most – of these looming retirements are the result of Obamacare. The paperwork burden, the compliance costs, the chance of violating Obamacare regulations that could produce severe fines and penalties and the coming decreases in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are conspiring to convince doctors that now is a good time to wind down their practices.

The right to “affordable health care” isn’t worth much if there is no doctor to provide the care.

“If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” may well go down as one of the biggest con jobs ever perpetrated by a U.S. president.

Finally, there’s history. What massive federal program has ever just “worked out?” Social Security and Medicare – massive in scale yet small when compared to a cabinet department takeover of one sixth of the U.S. economy – are right now so dysfunctional and so broke as to threaten the very solvency of the nation.

There is nothing to suggest that Obamacare is going to work out. There is everything to suggest that it is going to continue to cause economic dislocation and unintended consequences on a massive scale.

Wishful thinking will not redeem one of the worst pieces of legislation in U.S. history.

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Paul Gleiser

Paul L. Gleiser is president of ATW Media, LLC, licensee of radio stations KTBB 97.5 FM/AM600, 92.1 The TEAM FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas.

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5 Responses

  1. bullish bob says:

    Get the govt out of the health care industry! Stifle the insurance industry! Shrink the drug industry! Go to cash—see this website: http://watchdog.org/64814/ok-surgery-centers-cash-only-approach-offers-transparency-efficiency-affordability/

  2. PK says:

    This bill HAS to be stopped to even revise it.

    It was passed against the will of the people & will break this nation.

    We all must get behind this idea to stop it now!!!!

  3. CAN’T choose your own doctor?

    Scroll-down past other myths debunked at:
    http://www.factcheck.org/2013/09/obamacare-myths/

  4. C M Solomon says:

    It is a mistake for us to believe that Obamacare was EVER intended to provide medical treatment. It was a wily subterfuge from the beginning to persuade the ill-informed American public that government is better than the private, competitive, health insurance companies to guarantee medical treatment for less cost. It was sold as a Socialist scheme to provide near-free medical treatment to those unable to afford it, paid by the rich (minority) that could afford the taxes given the rules of social justice that infest the ruling elite in Washington. It was actually NEVER intended to provide medical TREATMENT, only the illusion of 100% medical COVERAGE – an easy propaganda message to sell.

    As long as the ruling class elite maintain their dictatorial control of the Washington bureaucracies that will issue tens of thousands of pages of regulations for the implementation of Obamacare, the cost of TREATMENT would stay under control by government edict; isn’t that right? These Obamacare bureaucracies are the rationing agencies of medical treatment by way of payment to the doctors that will ultimately become indentured servants of the nationalized, socialized medical industry being planned. Obamacare is just the first step. Obama himself said “you can’t do all of this at once.”

    Obamacare is not benevolent care; it is system for dictatorial control of the education and lifestyle of every citizen to adhere to proper “health standards” in order to obtain monopolized, government dispensed, medical treatment. The citizen is reduced to a resource that the government can guide, manipulate, threaten, or be forced to obey these “standards” as set by the ruling elite. This is the goal that the Socialist Utopians have fought for and dreamed of for 100 years: a well regulated society that overcomes “unhealthy” life-styles that infest the citizenry. It is the most necessary element for the proliferation and enforcement of their “social justice” dogma.

    Obamacare is a major step towards total control of our society as it evolves into “single payer” (100% government funded) Socialized Medicine. The frustrations of Obamacare that businesses and individuals are experiencing is DELIBERATE in order to create an outcry for the “single payer” system that most of the so-called modern western European governments have already adopted. It is not the concern of the ruling class Socialist elite in Washington if Socialized Medicine has never worked. They believe that it is a wonderful evolution of good medicine, a work in progress, and we are too ignorant to understand the brilliance of their Utopian “faith” in big government to solve the problems of mankind.

  5. Linda E. Montrose says:

    This was never about healthcare to begin with. If it were, there wouldn’t have been so much hidden within the interior of this monstrosity. No, it was about taking over and gaining control of people’s lives. The death panels they say weren’t in but were. The taking away from medicare to pay for this cancer obama turned loose on us. There is nothing in this bill worth saving and why the republicans won’t step up to the plate and defund it is beyond all reason. Anything that someone would get up in front of the nation and say you had to pass to see what all was in it, should have been a major clue as to it’s worth. But then obamacare was designed to destroy and decimate this country. Just as from day one in the Whitehouse, obama’s agenda was to destroy this Nation! It is too bad that the republicans have failed in their duty to uphold their oath of office and defend the Constitution of the United States since the democrats have been intent on paving a road to hell for us.

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