Serious talk of repealing Obamacare now surfacing

Saturday, November 16, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Obamacare, full repeal, health care reform

(NaturalNews) During the recent government shutdown, both Democrats and Republicans who disagreed with the Tea Party tactic of defunding Obamacare said it couldn't be done because, hey, Obamacare is the law of the land.

Shortly after the 2012 presidential election, House Speaker John Boehner said in an NBC News interview, "It's pretty clear that the president was reelected, Obamacare is the law of the land."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, head mistress over the worst website roll-out ever, has said: "This is no longer a political debate; this is what we call the law. It was passed and signed three years ago. It was upheld by the Supreme Court a year ago. The president was re-elected. This is the law of the land."

That's all we've heard since Obamcare was declared "constitutional" and "upheld by the Supreme Court," so it's the "law of the land."

That is, until it gets repealed, which sometimes happens to bad laws.

It won't last until 2014 elections

Repeal Obamacare? Isn't that what the Republicans have tried to do time and again for three years?

Yes. Only now, they may be getting new Democratic support. Here's why:

-- Obamacare has been - and continues to be a disaster.

-- Obama, a Democrat president, lied to get it passed.

-- Tens of millions of Americans are being told they are losing their current healthcare plans because of minimum coverage requirements under the law.

-- Not a single Republican voted for Obamacare.

-- Democrats who did vote for Obamacare are coming up for reelection next year - and Obamacare's damage is only going to get worse beginning next year.

So all of a sudden, Obamacare has become an albatross around Democrats' necks. They own it. And now they are running for cover.

Steven Hayward, writing at Forbes, predicts the law will be repealed before the 2014 elections:

Prediction: even if HealthCare.gov is fixed by the end of the month (unlikely), Obamacare is going to be repealed well in advance of next year's election. And if the website continues to fail, the push for repeal - from endangered Democrats - will occur very rapidly. The website is a sideshow: the real action is the number of people and businesses who are losing their health plans or having to pay a lot more. Fixing the website will only delay the inevitable.

Senate Democrats endangered for re-election will lead the charge for repeal perhaps as soon as January, after they get an earful over the Christmas break. They'll call it "reform," and clothe it in calls for delaying the individual mandate and allowing people and businesses to keep their existing health insurance policies. But it is probably too late to go back in many cases. With the political damage guaranteed to continue, the momentum toward repeal will be unstoppable. Democrats will not want to face the voters next November with the albatross of Obamacare.

Will it really collapse on its own?

How will this play out?

The Republican Party's conservative wing will insist upon a complete overhaul, arguing that the law is too convoluted and complex and overly bureaucratic to simply "fix" or "reform." Democrats hoping to salvage the biggest advance of socialism in a century will propose measures like this one: the "Keeping the Affordable Care Act Promise Act," which reportedly amends Obamacare to allow people who currently like their plans to be able to keep their plans.

Full repeal is the most likely, workable, long-term solution, because Obamacare simply cannot work or be sustainable if most Americans are permitted to keep their current plans. That's why many believe the law was written to do precisely what it is now doing - destroying the private health insurance industry so Americans would be forced to buy coverage through an Obamacare exchange.

As Hayward notes:

The hazard of the moment is that a compromise "reform" that drops the mandate and attempts to restore the insurance status quo ante could leave us with an unfunded expansion of Medicaid and a badly disrupted private insurance market.

Those who predicted Obamacare would collapse on its own may have been prophetic after all.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com

http://reason.com

http://thehill.com

http://www.foxnews.com