ObamaCare Baby: Rescue Me!

Pray for me! and what noise soever ye had, care not unto me, for nothing can rescue me.

Christopher Marlow (1564-1593), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Anyone who hates babies and dogs can’t be all bad.

W.C.  Fields (1880-1946), American Comedian

I’m a baby.  My name’s ObamaCare.  I know it’s not a good name.   But there’s nothing I can do to change it.  The man who conceived me named me.  and the other party, his wife, went along.  Her husband is  a mythical figure – a deity in the minds of those who worship him.

I’m nearly 4 years old now. March 23, 2014 will be my 4th birthday.   I’ve survived this long even though I have congenital defects.  Some say I’m a designer baby.  My parents  designed me to be a perfect political baby,   revered by all  and essential for all who viewed me.

But from my birth, my other potential parents, who thought they should have had a role to play in my conception,  looked askance at me.  They thought I was poorly designed -  too big, too controlling ,  too disruptive, too expensive.  They said I turned upside down their lives and the lives of their other children.   

They claimed I wasn’t good for their health. They could no longer keep their doctor and or their health plan. They couldn't lead their normal livdes without being  lectured to or deprived of their freedoms of choice.  I cost too much. They couldn’t afford me. For that matter, neither could ObamaCare’s  parents. They were already deeply in doubt.

ObamaCare’s original  parents said their baby rested on a three-legged stool – a guaranteed schedule, rated behavior, and rigid rules called mandates.  A mandate is a government order, not a doctor's order.

   

The three-legged stool is nonsense, said the alternative parents.   They quoted their godparent, Ronald Reagan,who said, “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”  It was a stool alright, a true baby stool, and it smelled.  

Those other parents were wrong.  My daddy and mommy had a formula for me,  their baby, and they were sticking to it, come smell or high water.

I was a bad  baby, in and out of trouble. often off my schedule.  You couldn’t predict what I would do next and what kind of grownup I might become.   My parents  changed my schedule on multiple occasions, 21 times to be precise,  to satisfy my other parents.  My real parents, the ones who designed and conceived me,  kept changing my diapers hoping the smell would go away, and the other parents would accept me and adopt me as their very own.

My daddy and mother digitated  my official  arrival on their website, but false  digits turned out to be tickets potentially hastening my demise.

Then, some people began to say I was beyond rescue and would surely die (Megan McArdle, “ObamaCare Is Beyond Rescue," Bloomberg Opinion, January 20, 2014).  They said people would not line up or sign up to adopt me or accept me because they had babies of their own.   I hadn’t lived up to my early promises.  They  couldn’t afford me, control me, or integrate me into the lives of their other children.

Others said  I would survive if only my  two sets of parents  had a biparentship conference and worked out their differences on my maintenance and upbringing (William Galston, “ObamaCare is No Lame Duck,”  Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2014).   Its spokesperson was optimistic, “The prospects for bipartisan governing are real…It is wrong to write off the next three years of ObamaCare’s existence when the possibility of compromise exists.”  

I agree.  I’m somebody’s baby.   I don’t want to be treated as a dead dog or a lame duck.   I want to be a healthy baby someone loves and treats with respect. I want to grow up to be an adult.

Tweet:   Think of ObamaCare  as a 4 year  baby struggling to survive, and it changes your perspective of what the health law is and could be.