Obama’s Obamacare Message:  Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative

Accentuate the Positive, Eliminate the Negative

World War II Song

The method to Obama’s Obamacare Madness is this:  tout the positive, ignore the negative.

·         Talk about those health plans rebates, now flowing to 8.5 million Americans.

·         Emphasize subsidies to 30 million uninsured and underinsured Americans.  

·         Rhapsodize on how the uncovered or denied are  now covered under their parent’s plans or the denied now must be  accepted by health plans. 

·         Focus on fixing those wicked health plans, which, incidentally, earn more than 50% of their revenues managing Medicare, Medicare, and Federal Health Benefit Plans, which government seem incapable of managing on their own.

Never, never, never mention soaring premiums,  losing your health plan and your doctor,   Obamacare's suppressant effect on small business hiring, the 30 hour week rather than 40 hour week,  the rebellion of your union allies, the waiving of thousands of political  allies from costs of Obamacare,  doctor demoralization with ensuing doctor shortages,  the coming IRS running of Obamacare out of the White House,  the 16,500 new IRS agents required for enforcement,  the 15,000 to 20,000 pages of new regulations, the $500 billion of new taxes required to finance it, the likelihood that government computer systems might not be ready for exchange signups, or that the young and minorities might not be eager to sign on.    

Those are No-Noes, the unmentionables only the GOP would stoop to mention.

I have an E-book,  Obamacare: Aspects, Issues, Costs, and Consequences, coming out soon.  Its subtitle is Posts of a Health Reform Watcher, a title  patterned after the Lewis Thomas series,  Notes of a Medicine-Watcher which ran so many years in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Watching Obamacare unfold, or fold up, take your pick,  intrigues me.  I can hardly wait to see what transpires.  I am only one observer of passage scene and how its outcome will effect Obama’s legacy.  Obama today at a press conference spoke defended  the Affordable Care Act.  He accentuated the positive, saying  8.5 million Americans would get rebates this summer from insurers,  who failed to follow the Obamacare provision that they spend at least 80% on premium revenues on care rather than marketing and administration and executive salaries.  He insisted Obamacare was “doing what it was designed to do.” Three big unions, led by  the Teamsters, did not agree, saying Obamacare undermined the very foundation of unionism, the 40 hour week. 

The Republican House response was to delay  the Employer Mandate and the Individual Mandate.   

And so the Washington Merry-go-Round goes round and round.   Where it stops,  on the Obamacare Legacy horse, the Big Government Santa Klaus horse, or the  Big Brother Republican horse, or whether everyone will dismount,   no one knows.

Tweet:  President Obama says  his health law is “doing what it was designed to do.”   Republicans are intent on undoing it and repealing it.