Bad News for Obamacare

Though it be honest, it is never good news to bring bad news.

Shakespeare (1564-1616), Anthony and Cleopatra

I’ll be honest.   Liberals who support ObamaCare and who think it’s coming out of the bad news woods, are wrong.  They are going against the grain of America's capitalistic and individualistic culture.

The bad news? The back-end of healthcare.gov won’t  be fixed soon.  Health plans cancellations will accelerate.  Conservatives will flood the news with ugly anecdotes of unaffordable premiums and deductibles affecting real people.  ObamaCare will dominate the news until the November 2014 elections. When a law helps people that is not news. That is the way it is supposed to be.  But when a law visibly hurts too many people, that is news.  Bad news is more powerful than good news.

The bad news will cancel the good news that glitches are being fixed;  the back-end is undergoing active repair and has turned the corner;   more people will see the light and will be signing up,   people by the millions  are benefiting from its positive aspects – protecting those with pre-existing illnesses, and so forth; 

Liberals dream that ObamaCare will surely follow the Massachusetts example, where reform has been accepted;  and by the end of Obama’s second term,  the health law will become locked-in and impossible-to-repeal,  a permanent part of the American social welfare landscape.

Everything will be all right  if the bulk of our citizens  do the “the right thing,” supporting less-fortunate citizens by redistributing  health care goods, services, and monies.

Sounds good,  does it not?  

But sad to say,   the bad news is that the good news may be wrong.   As Ross Douthat points out in today’s New York Times (“ObamaCare Turns A Corner?”),  Massachusetts  is not representative of the rest of the U.S,

“The Massachusetts law was a bipartisan law passed in a wealthy, homogeneous state with a pervasive left-liberal ethos. The national health law aspires to create the same sense of ‘positive responsibility ’ in a much more polarized, fragmented, socioeconomically diverse and libertarian-minded society, roughly half of which opposes the law outright.”

The rest of the U.S. is not Massachusetts,  as defeated  Bay State candidates  for  the U.S Presidency from  both sides of the aisle- Edward Kennedy, Michael Dukakis,  and Mitt Romney- will attest.  Throw in George McGovern, in the 1972 Presidential election,  in which Massachusetts was the only state to vote for McGovern in a 49 state Nixon landslide, and you get the picture. 

President Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer,  carries this liberal taint among the American public.   They do not believe he truly understands the American culture outside the Washington –New York- Boston beltways. 

Obama  may not  understand or appreciate  Americans’ bent, in the words of Thomas L. Friedman (“Can’t We Do Better?” New York Times, December 8, 2013) “ about how we incentivize and unleash risk-takers to start new companies that create growth, wealth and good jobs.  To have more employees we need more employers. Just re-dividing a slow-growing pie will not sustain the American-dream.”  Neither will controlling and regulating one-sixth of the American economy.

Tweet:   The bad news  is that the good news for liberals,,that ObamaCare might be veering towards acceptance is wrong: it does not reflect American culture.