I admit it. I have always admitted it. I am a card carrying member of the Tea Party. However, since we are a grassroots collection of local organizations, we don’t carry cards. What we do is stand for smaller government, less taxation and better representation. Taxed Enough Already? TEA Party. Proud to be on the right side of history, although it is sad it has had to come to this.
In 2009, I stood on street corners with hundreds (thousands) of like-minded Americans holding signs to hopefully stop the “Affordable” Care Act from becoming law. We were much maligned by the press and the left. And while the famous saying goes, by someone who was falsely accused by the news media, “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”, that is not why I put keyboard to blog this afternoon. Rather, it is to remind the country that I love so much that we were right, and we can still get out of this mess. We knew that if Obamacare became law that millions upon millions would lose their current coverage, despite the “misspoken” words of our President. That they would have to exchange the care and doctors they liked for something much more expensive and limiting. Not like it was hard to predict. Throw everyone into the pot and it’s inevitable. More people being insured, some with preexisting conditions, some too poor to pay for it themselves and you end up with millions paying more. It’s called math. Sometimes, math can be devastatingly honest.
Now reality is hitting, and it is hitting hard. Even supporters of Obamacare are finding out that they can’t keep their coverage even if they like it – period, and that the exchanges are a much worse deal complete with higher premiums AND deductibles. True, we didn’t know everything. Who could have guessed that implementation of the law would be so unbelievably botched? Still, the fact remains that we gave a clarion call that the “Affordable” Care Act would end up costing and costing dearly. We were mocked, called names, laughed at and dismissed. Probably because the administration knew what we knew: Americans would find out sooner or later what would happen to them under Obamacare. The President was betting that later would be too late. He knew Americans wouldn’t like it one bit when they discovered what was in the law once the law was passed and implemented.
There is some encouragement as I write this. The Democrat led House of Representatives that passed the bill without a single Republican vote has become the Republican led House of Representatives. Republicans ran on a message of repealing Obamacare and swept into leadership. Their courageous efforts even led to a government shutdown as Senator Ted Cruz voiced our concerns from the Senate Floor for 21 straight hours. Alas, the funding for the ACA wasn’t stopped as Senate Democrats voted against defunding or delaying Obamacare, and the House eventually caved. Now, some of those Senate Democrats who voted against delaying the ACA, and thereby continuing the government shutdown, are now calling for a delay in the ACA! Irony much? or I should say Hypocrisy much? But I digress.
Now that Americans on all sides of the isle are experiencing the inevitable sticker shock, I am hopeful that Obamacare can yet be stopped. You think it is bad now, wait until employers are no longer under the one year exemption of the employer mandate and millions of more Americans are thrown into the exchanges. I don’t care if the Tea Party gets credit for being right. I want the country to force our representatives to do what is right.
The “Affordable” Care Act. End it don’t mend it. Then we can restart the conversation on how to reform healthcare in this country by bringing market forces back into insurance coverage, and health care, to actually drive prices down and availability up. What a concept.
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