Republicans are correct to fight against excessive Obamacare subsidy
Originally published in the Columbus Dispatch, this is a slightly expanded version that goes into more detail. I truly appreciate the Dispatch for their willingness to include contrarian voices and headlines that help to sell newspapers
As a young and impetuous boy, my friends and I would occasionally play a game of chicken. It involved doing something potentially dangerous, with risk increasing each turn until someone “chickened out.” Thanks more to luck than skill, no one ever got seriously hurt.
Like other childhood games, playing chicken taught valuable life lessons; like assessing your own risk tolerance versus that of your opponents.
Politics is much the same and it’s playing out now with the recent federal government shutdown. In this case, the stakes are high enough that we might be in for a long one. That’s because the seeds of this were planted years ago.
The main point of contention, as both parties acknowledge, is the continuation of massive taxpayer subsidies to prop up the persistently unaffordable Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. These subsidies — handouts, really — now extend to Americans earning up to $124,800 — sort of. Two pieces of legislation passed during the Biden administration temporarily eliminated even that overly generous cap.
Those changes expire at the end of this year unless Congress re-enacts them.
Just as Obamacare was initially approved along almost exclusively partisan lines in 2010 — the only major entitlement program created without bi-partisan support — the same is true for the current budget impasse. Ohio’s entire congressional delegation thus far remains in lockstep with their respective party positions.
At least in 2010, Ohio still had one Blue Dog Democrat, Zack Space, who was willing to buck his party and vote “Nay” because he recognized just how unaffordable and inflationary Obamacare would be. We could use a few such brave dogs today.
Only a few days after his first inauguration in 2009, former President Obama famously said that “elections have consequences” while rejecting Republican input on his agenda, including from Ohio’s John Boehner, who was House GOP Leader at the time.
Ultimately, the extreme partisanship during Obama’s first term, which enabled the partisan passage of Obamacare, also led to Democrats losing control of the House. Then, in 2014, in another fit of partisanship, Mr. Obama again famously quipped that “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” in reference to using executive orders and actions to enact his agenda by going around the people’s representatives.
I don’t remember any “No Kings” rallies then.
Obamacare was a policy disaster because it was an insurance solution to a cost problem. And that cost problem was mostly a function of too much insurance, not too little.
Think of it this way: If you don’t know how much something costs and someone else always pays the bill, there’s no incentive for you to consume it thoughtfully. If food was free, we’d have an even bigger obesity problem than we do now. In fact, some of our farm subsidies actually do contribute to our obesity problem.
The problem in 2010 when Obamacare passed was too much “health care” not too little. It was prices utterly untethered to actual costs or patient value. By mandating more insurance and subsidizing its costs, Obamacare made all of those underlying problems worse.
Despite their ignorance of the actual problems with our health care system, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party longed for a nationalized health service. How many times were we told that the U.S. is the only developed nation without one? As if U.S. policy has to follow everyone else.
But Democrats lacked the votes for such a government takeover of nearly one fifth of the U.S. economy. Instead, they cobbled together the worst aspects of the U.S. healthcare system in order to provide health insurance — which isn’t the same as health care — to about half of the 15% of Americans who either couldn’t afford or made a deliberate choice to spend their discretionary funds on things they valued more.
Mr. Obama ginned up support for his plan by promising “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” PolitiFact called this whopper the “Lie of the Year.”
It was false because Obamacare directly and indirectly contributed to massive consolidation of hospitals and physician practices. Its new insurance mandates invalidated most individual policies. These changes robbed consumers of choices and broke many existing doctor/patient and insurance relationships.
The lack of competition in the newly consolidated markets and absence of the explicit price controls and care rationing that prop up all nationalized health systems led to unfettered cost increases.
Republicans have utterly failed to come up with a replacement for Obamacare. But at least in this current budget fight they have a chance to rein in some of its excesses.
Unlike my childhood games, this budget battle isn’t child’s play. Obamacare has wreaked havoc on our nation’s fiscal health and hasn’t helped Americans’ health either. It’s long past time for the GOP to grow a spine and stop the bleeding.
Democrats built this problem. Republicans have a chance — perhaps their last — to show they still remember how to solve one.