Obama’s Catastrophic Victory

And now for news of fresh disaster, courtesy of Peggy Noonan:

They said if you liked your insurance you could keep your insurance—but that’s not true. It was never true! They said if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor—but that’s not true. It was never true! They said they would cover everyone who needed it, and instead people who had coverage are losing it—millions of them! They said they would make insurance less expensive—but it’s more expensive! Premium shock, deductible shock. They said don’t worry, your health information will be secure, but instead the whole setup looks like a hacker’s holiday. Bad guys are apparently already going for your private information.

Look at the simple, factual eloquence of Edie Littlefield Sundby, from Monday’s Journal. It is a story that tells you everything you need to know about ObamaCare. It is the single most persuasive and informative piece written since the whole program began.

And now there are reports the insurance companies are taking advantage of the chaos of the program, and its many dislocations, to hike premiums. Meaning the law was written in such a way that insurance companies profit on it.

And—I am limiting things to just today’s news – the New York Times reports that while millions may qualify for enough federal subsidies to pay the entire monthly cost of some health-insurance plans, the zero premiums come with some “serious trade-offs.” What serious trade-offs? Most of these plans, called the bronze policies, “require people to pay the most in out-of-pocket costs, for doctor visit and other benefits like hospital stays.” Huh? I thought the purpose of the law was to help with the cost of doctor visits and hospital stays!

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Back to a sense of where we are. You know where we are? It’s as if it’s 1964 and the administration has just passed landmark civil rights legislation and the bill goes into effect, and everyone looks—only immediately it is apparent that it makes everyone’s life worse! It doesn’t help minority groups – it makes their lives harder and less free!

Wait, isn’t that exactly what happened? Not with civil rights, but via welfare and the Great Society’s wholesale destruction of the black family. As Thomas Sowell has written:

“In the period from 1954 to 1964, for example, the number of blacks in professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s–when there was little or no civil rights policy–than during the 1950s when the civil rights revolution was in its heyday.” He also notes that the increase in the number of blacks in professional and technical occupations in the two years following passage of the 1964 Act was actually less than in the year from 1961 to 1962.

If only we shared a culture with another nation that ill-advisedly went full-socialist, in order to predict the catastrophes and demise of cultural confidence to come.

If only.