The recent fiasco in Congress over repealing and replacing Obamacare was the result of an inability to obtain agreement, even among so-called "Republicans", that more welfare is not the answer to what is plaguing the American Republic.
That proposition should have earned the unqualified assent of every Republican Congressperson elected to office last November. That it did not is the measure of the State's degeneration to date, under both parties.
During Obama's eight years, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed dozens and dozens of measures repealing Obamacare. They went nowhere, thanks to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic President Barack Obama.
But now, when Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, they were unable to undo the regulatory disaster that is Obamacare for once and for all. Why?
The answer may not be popular, but here it is, in plain black and white:
Obamacare is welfare, plain and simple. Americans are hooked on welfare (the government paying for things that people used to obtain privately, whether on their own or though private charity). Rather than simply pass a bill repealing all of Obamacare, the Republican leadership tried to replace the welfare of Obamacare with a new form of welfare. And they could not get all of their colleagues in the party to agree to it -- because there are still some Republicans, at least, who think that subsidizing health care is not the proper function of the federal Government.
There are two major reasons why that stance is correct.
First, Government-run welfare programs are a guaranteed road to deficits and disaster. Look at how well Obamacare has fared, and look at the 225-plus years of the U.S. Postal Service. The reason is plain, but no bureaucrat will admit it: in welfare run by the government, there is no accountability to the bottom line. The tab for any and all deficits is simply picked up by "the taxpayers."
Second, people naturally value things only as they have to pay for them. Paying people's medical costs for them -- even with the absurd "deductibles" recently set under Obamacare -- keeps them from learning what are the real costs of the health care that they demand. And paying so that pre-existing conditions will be covered without question guarantees that people will not ever pay for health care coverage before they have need of it. Once again, the taxpayers are left with the deficits.
Notwithstanding those self-evident truths, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (and President Trump) tried to railroad through the House a replacement for Obamacare that would have kept Americans on medical welfare. The only thing to lament is that there were so few genuinely conservative Republicans who voted to block their attempt. But at least it was enough for the moment.
As America sinks ever deeper into the mire of unaccountable and unaffordable government, may those who see clearly come to dominate the current trend and reverse its course. We have not come this far only to abandon all that we stood for when we declared our independence, and to succumb again to serfdom under a (this time, self-imposed) tyranny.
Obamacare should indeed be repealed (along with the restriction of offering insurance across State borders). But there is no necessity whatever to replace it, and certainly not at the federal level. Let those States who have a majority of socialists vote in their own welfare programs, and let the markets decide what works best.
