During
the long national debate over the future of American health care,
President Obama frequently chastised his opponents for launching
exaggerated attacks on his plan for “reform.” He took particular
exception to the criticism that the changes he was pushing amounted to
a government takeover of the whole health sector. He knew full well
that this kind of criticism might derail the entire effort in Congress,
because most Americans recoil at the thought of a distant and
bureaucratic federal government running the health-care system for
everyone. So Obama vigorously denied that his program would lead to any
such thing. In his Aug. 8, 2009, radio address,
he described the “takeover” accusation as “outlandish” and
characterized his approach as a mainstream and moderate attempt simply
to reform the nation’s private health-insurance system.
It’s now been six months since Congress passed Obamacare — not a
long time given the sweeping nature of the legislation and the long
phase-in schedule for its most significant provisions. Even so, it is
already abundantly clear that Obamacare’s critics were dead right: The
new health law has set in motion a government takeover of American
health care, and a very hostile one at that. The Obama administration’s
clumsy and overbearing behavior since its passage proves the point.
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To distract the public from these power plays, the administration decided to launch a series of “information” campaigns that are plainly political and filled with all manner of distortions. HHS sent a letter to the nation’s Medicare beneficiaries supposedly explaining what the new law will mean for them. Somehow, it failed to mention that the law will cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars over a decade, and cut the value of Medicare Advantage by an average of 27 percent by 2017. HHS followed this up by putting the same distortions on television, in the form of an expensive advertising campaign featuring Andy Griffith.
In the meantime, busy beavers in various corners of the federal bureaucracy are laying plans for new fiefdoms. Thousands of new employees are planned for various offices in HHS, including the new office to regulate private health insurance nationwide. The IRS is gearing up both to enforce with tax penalties the requirement that everyone carry government-approved insurance, and to help administer the massive new entitlement program that will require income verification on tens of millions of applicants. States will also be forced to build new bureaucracies to carry out the scores of tasks the federal government will be ordering them to perform.
Massive bureaucracy. Disinformation campaigns. Blatant power plays. The politicization of decisions that should be made with a focus on patient care. The use of government power to threaten citizens and their livelihood.
This is what Obamacare has brought us. And that’s just in its first six months.
— James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.
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