The four co-authors of Why Obamacare is Wrong for America recently addressed The Bloggers Briefing at The Heritage Foundation. Grace-Marie Turner provided the Foundry exclusive highlights from her remarks.
Obamacare may be fading from the headlines, but the health law still is steaming toward us like a freight train.
Obamacare is the most sweeping single piece of social policy legislation in the nation’s history, and the very real and legitimate fears of a government take-over of our health sector caused millions of people to take to the streets in protest. Opposition to the new health law was the most important reason that voters elected conservatives to office in record numbers last fall.
So why is health care no longer front-page news? Largely because President Obama has decided to stop talking about it. And even when he does, he mentions only the early provisions, inserted largely for their political popularity – such as putting 26-year-olds on their parents’ health insurance, policies for people with pre-existing conditions, and “free” preventive care. Many people think, if that is all there was, what was the big fuss about?
Others think that Obamacare no longer is a threat: The House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal it on January 19 of this year, and two major federal courts have declared all or part of the law unconstitutional. A recent poll showed that nearly half of Americans think it either has been repealed or they aren’t sure. Others think that if so many companies can get a waiver from ObamaCare, they will get a waiver, too.
But the law is very-much in force, steaming toward us with hundreds of billions of dollars in new and higher taxes, job-killing mandates on businesses, crushing costs for the states, and creation of two massive new entitlement programs. The cost of this new law will be astronomical and will crush not only our health sector but our economy and will rob us of precious freedom.
The most important thing is for people to stay informed about what’s in this law and the impact that it will have on all of us as families, young people, seniors, employers, employees, doctors, patients, taxpayers, and citizens. That’s why we wrote our book, Why Obamacare Is Wrong for America. The president hopes you won’t read this book so you won’t know what’s in the law. But all of us HAVE to know what is coming because that is the only way to derail this train wreck that is coming in a few short years!
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute. She is the co-author with Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation, James C. Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Thomas Miller of the American Enterprise Institute of Why Obamacare Is Wrong for America from Broadside, an imprint of HarperCollins. Learn more at www.WrongForAmericaBook.com.