by William Skink
One thing has become crystal clear during this post-election transition period: Democrats are more than just sore losers; they are pathologically incapable of taking any responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Losing the election is just one glaring area where Democrats have deployed vigorous methods of scapegoating, with Russia featured as the central factor in Clinton’s loss. Another issue where Democrats refuse to acknowledge their failure is health care.
On a micro-level, individuals who weren’t previously covered and now do have coverage probably don’t see the Affordable Care Act as a failure.
On a macro-level, costs are ballooning and choice is dwindling. This is having huge negative impacts on those American citizens who are not wealthy and not poor enough to receive subsidies.
On a personal level, if I hadn’t gotten a job that provides pretty good health insurance, the cost increases my family was facing started a difficult conversation about whether we could afford to keep living in our house.
Now that coverage has been extended through the ACA, taking it away will be both incredibly cruel and economically disastrous. That doesn’t change the fact that the health reform Democrats succeeded in passing was originally a Republican idea birthed in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation.
Instead of acknowledging the actual fix to America’s health care woes–a single payer system that Montana’s Max Baucus ensured wasn’t seriously considered–outgoing lame duck loser, President Obama, is once again lashing out to blame others for his disintegrating legacy. The target of this latest effort to shift blame is Bernie and his supporters:
President Barack Obama said on Friday that criticism from the left wing of his own Democratic Party helped feed into the unpopularity of Obamacare, his signature healthcare reform law.
Obama has been spending part of his last two weeks in office urging supporters to speak out against plans by Republicans – who will soon control both the White House and Congress – to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
At a town hall event with Vox Media, Obama acknowledged the politics have been stacked against his reforms, mainly blaming Republicans who he said refused to help make legislative fixes to Obamacare, which provides subsidies for private insurance to lower-income Americans who do not have healthcare plans at work.
But Obama also said Liberals like former Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders had contributed to the program’s unpopularity.
No, President Obama, it’s not Bernie’s fault that the ACA is increasingly seen as a failed attempt to fix the most expensive and least efficient health care system on the planet. It’s the lived experiences of real people that has contributed to the program’s unpopularity.
There is a sliver-lining for Democrats as Republicans prepare to blowup Obamacare: the resulting pain of human suffering and state budget crises that will result can be solely pinned on Republicans. For partisans trying to figure out how to not lose elections, they will eagerly exploit this suffering for electoral gain.
When Republicans fall into this trap, the memory of how we got here will be obliterated. But some of us will remember that an opportunity to actually fix health care in America under the Obama regime was suppressed in order for Democrats to smear liberal lipstick on a conservative idea that proved critics were right: Obamacare was destined to fail.