Now that ObamaCare is five years old, wouldn’t it be nice – on its birthday – to think if Sen. Ted Cruz signs up for it, it most definitely cannot be all that bad – not a train wreck, not an unmitigated disaster, not “the worst thing since slavery,” as Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson put it.
After all, it is Cruz – the arch-enemy of ObamaCare – who repeatedly called the Affordable Care Act a “train wreck” and who vows to keep trying to repeal “every word” of that law. Don’t faint dead away, folks, but sure enough, bully-boy Cruz is signing up.
We learned recently he is about to choose an insurance plan through ObamaCare. It’s because his wife, Heidi, is taking a leave of absence from her job at Goldman Sachs so she can accompany her husband on the presidential-campaign trail. Thus, Cruz will no longer be covered on his wife’s health-insurance plan during her leave of absence. He’s got to get his own, like so many millions of Americans who could not get their own, who couldn’t afford it, before ObamaCare went into effect.
Cruz was quick to note he has no choice but to seek insurance through an ObamaCare exchange because one of the provisions of the law is that members of the U.S. Congress must use the exchange. Cruz will not get a government subsidy to help him pay for his monthly insurance premium. He makes too much money to qualify for one. However, we’re told his employer, the U.S. Congress, will pay for almost all of it. In other words, we the taxpayers will pay for his health-care premium. Now, if that isn’t a subsidy – a total subsidy – what is?
It’s so ironic Cruz is signing up via an ObamaCare market exchange, but let’s not celebrate just yet, folks. He assures us he hasn’t had a change of heart about the law. He continues to hate it with his usual passionate irrationality.
Cruz said this: “I believe in 2017 a new president, a Republican president, will sign legislation repealing every word of it. There are a fair number of Republicans in Washington and elsewhere who have quietly and privately given up on that fight and I have not.”
Spoken like a true entrenched demagogue.
Among the “fair number of Republicans” who have given up on the fight are those who have realized, after all their squawking, that the law is, in fact, working quite well, far better than expected and infinitely better than the end-of-the-world, death-panel, train-wreck disaster gleefully predicted by Obama-haters.
An estimated 16 million people now have health insurance directly or indirectly because of the Affordable Care Act, with more coming on board all the time. Who can argue with that wonderful fact?
Yes, there have been problems with ObamaCare, not the least of which was its disastrous, inexcusable, bungled Internet roll-out fiasco. There have also been ongoing problems with the Minnesota exchange system – delays and other glitches. Like any major new program (like its predecessors Social Security and Medicare), problems are bound to happen and adjustments will need to be made.
No, ObamaCare is not perfect, but it is infinitely better than what existed before it – a hopeless situation under which millions of people were unable to afford or to access insurance coverage, sometimes because of pre-existing conditions; sick people in pain going to emergency rooms and causing others to pick up the tab for treatment; people dying who could have been saved if their problems would have been diagnosed earlier – that is, if they could have had ready and affordable access to clinics, which they didn’t have.
Those who are so rabidly opposed to the Affordable Care Act, politicians like Ted Cruz and so many others who heed the shrill opponents, have yet to come up with any alternative for affordable health care. The Republican-dominated U.S. House and Senate have not proposed any serious workable health-care reform other than their spiteful, childish attempts to vote down ObamaCare. Fifty-plus times they have pulled off that stupid stunt.
ObamaCare is working; millions are enrolled; more and more are getting the health care they need; medical costs are at long last on the decline; premiums are moderating compared to the pre-ACA years; private insurance industries are thriving; people are healthier and happier. Call that a train wreck? On the contrary, it sounds like a train on the tracks to a better future for all Americans.
Maybe it’s time the gloom-and-doomers stop their squawking and step on up at the next whistle stop. Many already have jumped aboard because they know that by the 2016 presidential election, the ACA will be a political plus, not a curse.
“All aboard!”
