The federal government never won the hearts-and-minds battle on health insurance “reform”. Bullied by Barack Obama’s White House, Congressional Democrats were too busy ramrodding a mammoth bill into law to weigh public sentiment. Eventually, we were told by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the clueless masses would come around beyond “the fog of controversy.”
With the hearts and minds of growing numbers of Americans still telling them that a government hijacking of the nation’s health care system is a reckless experiment destined to diminish medical standards, at best, and a large first step down the road to Socialism, at worst, ObamaCare is about to be front and center once again. Just in time for the November mid-term elections.
The problem is, throwing out the perpetrators of this takeover won’t undo it. But there is good news as well: opposition is rising up across the land.
Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia were among 19 states that moved swiftly to file anti-ObamaCare lawsuits. A Virginia federal judge today ruled that the state’s complaint can stand after a challenge to its validity by the feds. The next major battle line post-passage will be drawn in the Show-Me State, where Missouri Republicans are presenting a ballot item Tuesday that asks voters a simple question: Does the federal government have a right to require an individual to carry health insurance?
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV poll (by independent polling firm Mason-Dixon) turned up 61% of respondents who oppose ObamaCare. Among independents who responded, 65% give it a thumbs-down. These results are consistent with a national Rasmussen Reports poll released July 26. Rasmussen asked 1,000 likely voters a similar question, with 58% saying they are against/oppose ObamaCare compared to 37% who are for/favor the overhaul.
Associated Press reports that the Missouri ballot “amounts to the largest-ever public opinion poll on the nation’s new health care law”, with ballot questions still to come this November in Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma asking voters to approve constitutional amendments that reject the bill’s federal mandates.
Governors’ offices are discovering that the bureaucratic tentacles contained in the 2,800-page bill passed in March already have begun to strangle their cash strapped infrastructures. The Wall Street Journal today reports that Obama’s national health care enforcer, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is being met by growing frustration as she interacts with the states. Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana told the Journal he is surprised that Sebelius, the former Kansas governor, didn’t see the push-back coming.
The folly of national health care is common sense for many Americans, but as a reminder that their instincts are spot on, two members of Congress created a visual “guide” to ObamaCare (see chart below) that tells a perplexing story of “a monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington bureaucrats,” said co-creator Kevin Brady, a member of the U.S. House from Texas.
At the heart of this madness: 159 new federal programs, phased in from now until 2018, that inflict brazen social tyranny and massive wealth re-distribution on the United States of America.
Sebelius infamously became a YouTube video highlight during the now forgotten H1N1 panic when she admonished a journalist for his failure to sneeze properly. She demonstrated the government-approved “technique”.
With more Americans growing sick to their stomachs as ObamaCare lurks, perhaps for her next act Sebelius might show us how to vomit.