Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Obamacare: Elitist And Inefficient
Obamacare: Elitist And Inefficient
Nov 19, 2024 5:25 PM

NRO’s Mark Steyn minces no words when es to his distaste for Obamacare: “a hierarchy of privileges,” he calls it, along with “crappy” and “inefficient.”

First, Steyn points out that it’s doubtful anyone has read the prehensive” health care act: it’s a thousand pages long. As he says, the problem with something so prehensive” is that “when everything’s in it, nothing’s in it.” But worst of all, it means whatever the government wants it to mean:

The Affordable Care Act means whatever President Obama says it means on any particular day of the week. Whether it applies to you this year, next year, or not at all depends on the whim of the sovereign, and whether your CEO golfs with him on Martha’s Vineyard. A few weeks back, the president unilaterally suspended the law’s employer mandate. Under the U.S. Constitution, he doesn’t have the power to do this, but judging from the American people’s massive shrug of indifference he might as well unilaterally suspend the Constitution, too. Obamacare is not a law, in the sense that all persons are equal before it, but a hierarchy of privilege; for example, senators value their emir-sized entourages and don’t want them to quit, so it is necessary to provide the flunkies who negotiated and drafted the Affordable Care Act an exemption from the legislation they imposed on the citizenry. Once again, the opt-out is not legal.

Another issue Steyn has with Obamacare is that now, everyone and their mother is involved in your health care:

For most of modern history, your health care was a matter between you and your doctor. Since World War II, in much of the developed world, it’s been between you, your doctor, and your government. In America, it’s now between you, your doctor, your government, your insurer, your employer, your insurer’s outsourced pany...Anybody else? Oh, let’s not forget Lois Lerner’s IRS, which, in the biggest expansion of the agency in the post-war era, has hired 16,500 new agents to determine whether your hernia merits an audit.

Steyn is also concerned with the economic effects of Obamacare, which he deems “destabilizing.” He believes about 40 percent of Americans are going to get caught in the part-time/not-quite-full-time trap that keeps employers from having to insure them. The “elites”, he says, believe that Obamacare makes perfect sense – for everyone but them.

The U.S. economy can never recover until more of its real “human resources” are engaged in genuine wealth creation. Yet Obamacare instead incentivizes the diversion of more and more manpower into the Republic of Paperwork.

It remains to be seen if Obamacare will take off, as it continues to draw fire from employers, unions, politicians and plain old Americans that just don’t trust a thousand pages of everything and nothing.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
If you hate poverty, you should love capitalism
Did you know that since 1970, the percentage of humanity living in extreme poverty has fallen 80 percent? How did that happen? Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, explains. ...
Millennials, marriage, and the ‘success sequence’
“What if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral — bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.” –George Will According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the values and priorities of young adults are shifting dramatically from those of generations past. As it relates to family in particular, millennials are pursuing a range of nontraditional routes, either...
The $15 minimum wage is most likely to hurt ‘economically weaker’ areas
The scenario is familiar: Ontario has passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a new report warns that could increase unemployment. Significant evidence reinforces concerns that this well-intentioned change will harm the poor. Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the minimum wage would rise from $11.40 to $15 an hour across Canada’s most populous province by 2019. That boosts the minimum by nearly one-third. A new report from the Fraser Institute warns such a steep hike leads...
Radio Free Acton: Mollie Ziegler Hemingway on fake news; Upstream on Fleet Foxes and R.E.M.
In this newest edition of Radio Free Acton, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, talks with Sarah Stanley, managing editor at the Acton Institute. Mollie explains how distrust for news in the media has grown and how integrity in journalism can be reclaimed. Mollie’s conversation with Sarah is a sampling of an ing Acton lecture series event taking place on September 28th. Bruce Edward Walker then speaks with writer and musician, Robert Dean Lurie about the newest Fleet...
The connection between property rights and religious freedom
According to Founding Father James Madison, “the rights of persons and the rights of property” constituted the “two cardinal objects of government.” And the “most sacred form of property,” according to Madison, was an individual’s conscience since “other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and inalienable right . . .” Both property and conscience (religious freedom) have been considered foundational rights. But what exactly do they have mon? More than we may...
Rev. Robert Sirico praises President Trump’s recent remarks about Venezuela
President and Co-Founder of the Acton Institute, Rev. Robert Sirico is quoted in an article published at Crux, praising President Trump for his remarks concerning Venezuela’s current social and economic state of chaos. “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented,” said Trump on Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Sirico tells Crux that he was “relieved and encouraged to hear President...
What you should know about the Graham-Cassidy Obamacare repeal bill
What is Graham-Cassidy? Graham-Cassidy is the shorthand title for a proposal introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to repeal and replace Obamacare. Does this legislation “repeal and replace” Obamacare? As with the previous three Republican proposals, the answer is yes and no (but overall, not really). No, the Graham-Cassidy does pletely repeal Obamacare in toto and it merely replaces some aspects of the current law. But yes, it does repeal certain aspects of Obamacare and in...
Hurricanes as schools of charity
The only force greater than the destruction wrought by this summer’s hellish hurricanes is the solidarity written indelibly upon the human heart. The acts of charity they galvanize show the power of voluntary efforts springing from voluntarism, virtue, passion. Unfortunately, natural disasters often inspire calls for more government intervention, either to fight climate change or to preserve the temporary sense of national unity they create. But Steve Stapleton writesthat “the default position of a free people in a free society...
Samuel Gregg: ‘First Things,’ R.R. Reno, and the market economy
The role of free market economics in the West should not be off-limits for debate among religious conservatives. As Samuel Gregg writes in a new essay, that standard should “provide philosophical and theological guidance about how to ground free economies—and liberal institutions more generally—upon more solid foundations than the peculiar mixes of utilitarianism, autonomy-for-autonomy’s sake, and pseudo-evolutionary theory advocated by some liberal thinkers.” In a new article, First Things editor R. R. Reno makes claims about the market economy and...
On man vs. robots, don’t trust the economic models
Given the breakneck pace of improvements in automation and artificial intelligence, fears about job loss are taking more space in the cultural imagination.Symbolized by President Obama’s famous laments about ATM machines and the more recent concerns about Amazon’s “job-killing” grocery-store roboclerks, the anxiety is palpable and persistent. Enter the economic planners and doomsayers, using elaborate models and forecasts to affirm such fears, predicting the rise of robot overlords and the demise of human labor. Take the famous 2013 study by...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved