The President That Time Forgot
The President That Time Forgot
ObamaCare was a legislative monolith, out of sync with an iPad world.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
Leaked national security secrets may be a dime a dozen now, but the Supreme Court still sits as the last major American institution that doesn't conduct its business out the back door. Which is to say none of the Supreme Court's nine justices called me to reveal their ObamaCare decision before its Thursday annunciation. What difference does that make? Anyone who had to wait for the Supreme Court to tell them what the Affordable Care Act represents is too far behind the curve to ever catch up. Alas, that includes Barack Obama, the president that time forgot.
Whether ObamaCare was affirmed or overturned by the ladies and men in robes, nothing was going to change one unimpeachable fact: From day one, the Obama health-care legislation was swimming against the tides of history. It was a legislative monolith out of sync with an iPad world. In the era of the smartphone, ObamaCare was rotary-dial health reform.
The signs this was so were everywhere, but Barack Obama and the Pelosi-Reid edition of the Democratic Party blew past them. Years before it arrived at the Supreme Court's door, the Obama health-care law was unpopular with the American public. With occasional exceptions, its unfavorables have been above 50% for nearly three years. And why not? It runs counter to the daily experience of virtually everyone.
Electronics, foods, fashion, entertainment, apps, social media, appliances—pretty much anything that escapes the cold hands of a public agency is laid before us in a dazzling, unprecedented array of choices. Despite all the incoming, people learned to navigate the options. Virtually everyone has become adept at customizing a personal milieu that suits them. Given a reasonably growing economy, they'll be able to sustain these choices.
In this context, the Affordable Care Act gave new meaning to the word "outlier." Starting with the insurance mandate. Of course most people hated it. They're living in a world turning more anti-mandate by the minute, and the Democrats are ordering them all into a national health-insurance pool.
Back in 2010, some Democrats talked like it was 1937 all over again. They intoned how for 70 years they've wanted to enact a big national health-care law. The Depression—those were the glory days. Or they said ObamaCare's coverage-for-all would close the policy loop left open 45 years ago with Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. So naturally one pillar of the Obama health-care law was to push more people into Medicaid's already faceless, frightening maw.
This is a Democratic Party whose political survival now is yoked to monolithic public-employee unions that themselves haven't allowed a new idea in 40 years. The teachers unions persist in an irrational, immoral refusal to try other ways of teaching inner-city kids.
Public-employee unions in California are letting towns and cities—the latest is Stockton—slide over the fiscal cliff. Since JFK, the Democrats have departed once from a political one-size-must-fit-all, and that was the Clinton welfare reform, which freed impoverished women to enter the private economy inhabited by everyone else. That was it. The Republicans, to their discredit, don't have an alternative to ObamaCare, but at least they're not still building more Titanics.
The Affordable Care Act is the exhibit du jour, but there is a disconnect nearly everywhere between governments and the reality of the way life is lived by the people they govern. Across Europe, the young are being drowned by something known as "the welfare state." It sounds more Orwellian than it did the first time. Other than the crude imperatives of survival amid a modernizing people, the Chinese Communist Party is clueless.
It remains astonishing that even now, the one American politician who instinctively grasped that the standard model of 20th-century government needed to adjust was Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama deployed the new world of social media in 2008 to become president, and then violated every new thing social media represents with a health-care law whose central processing unit is the antiquarian Department of Health and Human Services. He similarly nationalized student loans, forcing college students to deal with the punch-card mainframes or whatever they use at the U.S. Department of Education.
The public sector of its nature will always be behind the curve. But does it have to be routinely out of it, as Washington is now? The American people await a national politician or political party whose public policies at least occupy the same universe that the electronic tablet represents—real value that can be altered and upgraded to admit new realities.
Over time, a health-care dinosaur like ObamaCare was likely to implode under its own weight. It was inevitable that some future Congress would be forced to allow the delivery of medicine to join the rest of us in the 21st century. With or without the Supreme Court's thoughts Thursday on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, that day lies in the future.
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Interesting Pics 2012
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The religion of Climate Science
Rio: killing the earth since 1992
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Jer's Photo of the Day
Photos and Photo Art by Sebastianjer
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NOT EXACTLY FRONT PAGE NEWS
Emails: White House worked with health industry to send business to Axelrod’s firm
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Election 2012
Since April I have been tracking "Likely Voter" polls in the states that could possibly be in play in November. These are not polls of just "registered voters" but only those of "likely Voters" which are generally accepted to be the most accurate. As we get closer to the election most polling outfits will begin to poll only "likely voters" at present only a few do now. I will post the most recent of these LV polls as I find them. A (+) represents Obama is up a (-) represents that Romney is up in that state according to the most recent LV poll.
FL/ -4 OH/ -3 PA/ +6 IA/ -1 NC/ -3 VA/ -5 AZ/ -13 CO/ +4 NV/ +8 MO/ -7 NH/ +5 MI/ -3 MN/ NA WI/ -3 ME/ NA OR/ NA NJ/ NA NM/ NA GA/ NA SC/ NA IN/ NA
History in Pictures
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TODAY'S QUOTE
"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality."
Ayn Rand
Reader Comments
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The fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court just validated, institutionalized and made a precedent for this behavior should make people at the very least scared. But instead we get excuses. All I can say is shame on those who hold their nations political processes to such cynical standards I have come to expect such attitudes from the progressive left if those on the right have sunk to this level we are lost.
The court did what they were supposed to do, with a super size addition.
Most of the time they rule on the formal documentation and complaint.
If they did, this law would be out. The commerce clause was what this was about.
This court opted to enhance the ruling by adding that this is a legitimate tax.
IMHO, that is the worst thing that could have happened for the administration. Think about it.
What a tool for an election that could oust the control of the Senate and WH.
You now have a Tax that is placed directly upon the middle class and young workers of this country.
Does anyone remember the POTUS dissing the SC?
LOL!
Just callin the way I see it, as far as I go - I vote them out when I don't agree with their votes (congress) My point was never that he was right or wrong - not making excuses - just saying that the post on your previous page made mention on it being a political decision. I just don't think it is on the part of Roberts, some of the other judges - yes definitely. Night.
I have signed every online petition I could - repeal is the only way now or at least defunding. We have no money to pay for it whether the "tax" is collected or not - it's a big joke.
I guess I didn't finish my thoughts.
"not because of any principle in the Constitution,but because of individual views of desirable policy"
What he's saying can be construed as;
It's subjectivity only if they disagree with Congress.
I think he should have stopped while he was ahead.
The ignorance of the left is that they honestly believe this is only going to affect those that don't have insurance and will have to pay the "penalty/tax" they are not even looking at what this is going to do and is already doing to health care costs and personal disruption across the board.
The CBO says 20 million people will lose their employer provided insurance and the left seems to think that's cool because now they will have to go on government exchanges on the way to a single payer system. They seem to have absolutely no concern or understanding of the devastating consequences these policies are going to have on not only small businesses but families all across the country.
The ones who are going to make out are the large corporations which they rail against who will be able to pay cheaper fines than paying employee health insurance so they will dump people from their coverage. The ideologues have not even been paying attention to all the waivers which are keeping this from happening now to prevent it from being so painfully obvious prior to the election.
To them all this is just a political battle won on the way to Utopia-sick and sick of their stupidity.
Just don't forget where the roots of what we see happening comes from.
Just Sayin, oldie but still a very real, and currently observed, goodie :)
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/
Oh, it is real, and it is amoungus : )slang)
Rio 20 just last week, eh?
Agenda 21/Sustainable Development/Smart Growth> has proven to be locally and systemically infectious, yet ineffective.
Just look around you >>>>>>>>>>
Next!
It takes one argument against Obama's past "accomplishments" away, that it was unconstitutional, but leaves something many dislike including a majority of Independents to be dealt with. People vote hope for the future more than what happened in the past. The fact that it is not unconstitutional which a majority of people thought is was anyway is not going to make people suddenly like it.
The CBO says 20 million will lose employer-provided insurance? Really, Jer? Let's look at what the CBO report actually stated:
CBO and JCT Estimate that About 3 Million to 5 Million Fewer People Will Obtain Employer-Based Coverage
Employers' decisions about offering employment-based health insurance under the ACA will be influenced heavily by the subsidies available to some people through insurance exchanges and Medicaid and CHIP and by the tax treatment of employment-based insurance. CBO and JCT have estimated that many workers and their families will not be eligible for Medicaid, the Children%u2019s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), or substantial subsidies for the purchase of health insurance through the exchanges, and that most employers will continue to have an economic incentive to offer health insurance to their employees.
The Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Employment-Based Health Insurance
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