The Daily Hatch

The Obamacare Problem Isn’t Messaging, It’s Statism

July 1, 2013 by Dan Mitchell

The political elitists in Washington are worried that the American people are lukewarm – or even downright hostile – about Obamacare.

You can imagine two of them having a conversation, with the first saying, “Don’t these stupid peasants realize we’re giving them stuff?!?” and the second responding “We need the riff-raff in flyover country to feel grateful so they’re more likely to vote in favor of continued dependency!”

It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe, people value freedom. Or, even if they don’t care about liberty, perhaps they object to the fact that government costs a lot and delivers very little. Nobody likes paying for a steak and getting a hamburger, after all.

But the statists think it’s just a matter of messaging, and this mindset is even seen in news coverage.

Here’s some of what Politico wrote today.

The Obama administration and its health-law allies are gearing up this summer to slice through three years of confusion and opposition to Obamacare. They’ve got their work cut out for them. Obamacare won’t have a shot at success unless millions of people sign up for insurance — the healthy as well as the sick. …Organizing for Action, spun off from President Barack Obama’s campaign operation, went up with a seven-figure TV ad buy in June, touting the new benefits and promising to offer “the truth” about the law. Enroll America, a nonprofit group with ties to the White House, wants to leverage the grass roots across the country and engage big-name celebrities for the cause.

To put it mildly, they have their work cut out for them.

Thanks to absurd regulations and mandates that prevent the insurance market from working properly, young people and healthy people will have to pay far more than the market rate to obtain insurance.

Needless to say, not that many people will be dumb enough to take that deal, regardless of how many empty-headed Hollywood millionaires take part in a PR campaign telling them it’s the “cool” thing to do.

Especially when another brainless part of Obamacare basically allows people to wait until they get sick and then get insurance. If you’re wondering how that will work, just imagine how auto insurance would work if you could wait until after your DUI accident to get a policy – and you got subsidized by all the responsible drivers!

Obamacare defenders may delude themselves into believing that the mandate will work, but the penalty for noncompliance (oops, apologies Chief Justice Roberts, I meant the “tax” for noncompliance) is a lot less than the cost of an insurance policy.

And I don’t think the American people will be pleased when the army of new IRS agents starts harassing them to sign up for a bad deal.

It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for the hacks at OFA and elsewhere who are trying to sell this lemon.

Simply stated, it doesn’t matter how much lipstick you put on a pig.

Let’s close with some amusing Obamacare cartoons, starting with one by Bob Gorrell which sort of shows how the IRS will enforce the new law.

By the way, my favorite IRS-related Obamacare cartoon can be seen here.

Here’s a good cartoon by Steve Breen about the cost of the new law.

For what it’s worth, some of us were predicting runaway costs even before the legislation was enacted.

Let’s finish with this amusing cartoon by Gary Varvel. Technically speaking, Nancy Pelosi was right.

Though I imagine she thinks we just need some clever messaging so we understand why it’s okay that bad things are happening to children, retirees, and low-income workers.

Let’s conclude with some optimism. Click here to read my six-part hypothesis on why this bad law can be repealed.

When our government is spending over a trillion dollars they don’t have and then they put in another big government program then watch out. Costs will go through the roof because the government will run Obamacare about as good as it runs the post office. Sometimes things get so sad that you just have to […]

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