The people of the United States ensured an Obamacare future by apparently reelecting President Obama and maintaining a Democratic Senate. Here are the immediate consequences:
1. The IPAB will go into effect: As I have written, IPAB is the cornerstone of a planned bureaucratic state. The only way now to thwart that is pure obstructionism. First, by filibustering the nominations that President Obama will make to the Board. Not going to happen. Second, by defunding. Even though the House will stay Republican, I don’t see them taking that route on what, to most people, is an abstract issue.
2. The attack on religious freedom will continue: The Obama Administration is an implacable foe of faith operating outside the four walls of church or cloister. Don’t look for the president to offer religious institutions who oppose the free birth control rule anything other than lip service to accommodation of religious institutions. Businesses will be forced to take their cause to the Supreme Court. Don’t count on help there, as the technocratic statists control the court 5-4, perhaps 6-3. Eventually, we will see a free abortion rule.
3. The Mandate will now be carried out: States that have been resisting will now begin to cooperate with the Feds by establishing exchanges.
4. There will be death panels: In a centralized system, rationing is the cost containment method of choice. The UK shows us the future of the USA. Already, powerful liberal voices on health care such as the New York Times and New England Journal of Medicine, have called for it. It is going to become very scary to be considered unproductive.
5. Single Payer, here we come: Obamacare is going to eventually implode. That will also take down the private insurance market. The result, in about 10 years, will be single payer. And that is by design. Oh, and single payer’s inevitable outcome is health care rationing.
Obamacare isn’t just about health care. It is–as designed–a cultural bulldozer, forcing the left’s liberal social views on all of society. And at this point, I am not sure what can be done about it.
Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: National Review
