Wednesday 2 October 2013

Obamacare. A step too far

I am a left leaning softie liberal when it comes to politics and thus I naturally gravitate towards President Obama on that basis that he's better than the vile republicans whose draft budget that cries out to heaven for vengance.

I also naturally supported the idea of affordable health care, something aking to our own beloved NHS (may God bless her and all who serve Him in her and may He defend her mightily against the ravages of ungodly tories) I thought. 50 million Americans live without healthcare insurance and that number is rising. Clearly this needs to be addressed. The profit motive is a dangerous principle to adopt within healthcare because it ends up with a company putting a price on a God given life. The Republicans haven't got an acceptable solution. Obama's offered Obamacare. Fine then.

Alas and alack.

It seems that I was naïve and that in fact Mr Obama was being somewhat scurrilous.

The US national debt is currently at an astonishing level. Beyond the comprehension of the people organising the attempt to pay it off. Obamacare would add an enormous sum onto the already mountainous total. The simple truth is, however brilliant Obamacare might have been, the US simply could not have afforded to implement it. Just not a possibility. To buy things you need money or the ability to borrow money. The US have no money and no longer have the ability to borrow money.

To manage to get the Bill to the stage it's at, Obama had to be devious in his winning over its opposition. Basically, he let them off it. Be they supreme court judges or Nanci Pelosi's electorate. It reminded me very much of the ancienne regime in pre revolutionary France whereby the third estate the bulk of the tax and the clergy and nobility paid very little. For all the excpetions he's willing to give, he's not willing to let the Catholic Church have one on paying for contraception and even abortions, which bizarely he considers to be part of healthcare.


Obama presented the Bill for discussion with a day's notice. It is a very large document and almost none of the senators have had time to digest it. Is it any wonder that the Republicans find this unacceptable. That said, I suspect if they got no pay for the time during which the government is shut down and they're not doing anything, the situation would not have arisen.

Mr Obama will call it a tax when it suits him (like when he wants to have the Supreme Court hold it as constitutional) and an optional purchase when it doesn't. Even if not purchasing it provokes a fine.

I fear that much of the blame for the current shutdown must be left at the door of Mr Obama. The republicans haven't got a better solution to the problem, but Mr Obama has gone about this very badly. If he had been more honest, I imagine that the Republicans would have kicked up a fuss because that's what they do. Even so, I imagine he would have managed to get it through. The fact that not a signle Republican voted for the Bill says to me something is out of joint and I suspect that being up front is that joint.

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