Two years ago today, President Obama signed his health care reform plan into law. His decision reflects the Democrats’ fatal error in believing that one day the public would support their health care scheme. In fact, not even the president is taking the time today to tout what the administration hails as one of his signature achievements. It hasn’t happened and, according to the Wall Street Journal, here is one reason why:
When the health-care overhaul became law after a bitter debate, many Democrats predicted Americans would grow to like it as they started enjoying some of the early benefits.
The day after the president signed the bill into law, which happened exactly two years ago, an average of major polls collated by the website Real Clear Politics showed 50.4% of Americans opposed. This week, that had changed only by a tenth of a percentage point, ticking up to 50.5%.
The health law remains a tough sell for reasons that go beyond the drumbeat from Republicans for its repeal and questions about its constitutionality that will be debated next week at the Supreme Court. Several of the law's early pieces, designed to win public support, haven't worked as well in the real world as on paper and have irked even some of the Americans they were designed to help.
In reality, the American people were never going to support a multi-trillion dollar government takeover of health care. Despite the best efforts by the president to sell his plan to the public, we continue to learn that all the empty rhetoric leads to nothing more than broken promises.
Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, noted on the eve of ObamaCare’s anniversary that the devastating consequences of this failed law are hurting employers, workers, and families across the country:
“Two years ago, President Obama sent the nation down a costly path of bureaucracy and broken promises. Job crushing mandates, higher costs for families, and more government control that threatens the health care of millions of individuals is the growing legacy of this flawed law. America’s families shouldn’t have to fear losing their health care, and employers cannot afford a government-run scheme that makes it even more difficult to create jobs.”
The American people deserve better than broken promises and a job-destroying health care law. Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments that may decide the fate of the president’s unpopular reforms. The Wall Street Journal provides a startling reminder of what is at stake:
Few legal cases in the modern era are as consequential, or as defining, as the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court hears beginning Monday. The powers that the Obama Administration is claiming change the structure of the American government as it has existed for 225 years. Thus has the health-care law provoked an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional showdown that endangers individual liberty. …
The stakes are much larger than one law or one President. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Supreme Court's answers may constitute a hinge in the history of American liberty and limited and enumerated government. The Justices must decide if those principles still mean something.
As the facts continue to surface two years after ObamaCare became law, more Americans realize this is an unconstitutional scheme that families cannot afford. We are all anxiously waiting to learn whether the court agrees.
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