The Bill Clinton Flip Flop

It appears that President Obama’s signature legislation of his administration, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, isn’t working.

For four years now, experts have pointed to the fact that not enough people have signed up for the program, that there aren’t enough insurance options in many areas and that of the 23 original tax-funded insurance “co-ops” that the ACA set up (after spending $2.5 billion on them), 12 have failed outright and another eight are in danger of failing by the end of this year.

Obamacare, which was supposed to lower the cost of insurance for many struggling Americans, has actually raised it in numerous cases and limited health care options for large numbers of people.

Insurance companies like Aetna, UnitedHealth and Humana have started to bail out of Obamacare programs after losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s becoming clear to the majority of voters that Obamacare is a bust, plain and simple.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said she would like to extend the ACA and try to get more Americans to be covered under it, but by now, it’s apparent even to many Democrats that the program is an expensive boondoggle that was poorly thought out, poorly executed and will likely have to be unwound soon in favor of something better.

“In general, there’s not a turnaround in sight,” said Thomas Miller, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. “The same problems that plagued them before are continuing.”

As it turns out, even Hillary Clinton’s husband, ex-President Bill Clinton is not a big believer in Obamacare. At a rally in Flint, Michigan earlier this week, Bill Clinton said, “So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”

After the campaign of Republican nominee Donald Trump heard about this, Trump remarked humorously the next day, “At least he’s honest; he’s very late. In the meantime, [Hillary Clinton] wants to double down on Obamacare. I’ll bet [Bill Clinton] went through hell last night. Can you imagine what he went through after making that statement? He went through hell. But you know honestly, there have been many nights when he’s gone through hell with Hillary.”

Trump’s former rival and now advisor, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson said Obamacare “is, really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is in a way, it is slavery… ObamaCare fundamentally changes the relationship between the people and the government. The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people, not dictate to the people what they are doing. And with this program, we’re allowing that whole paradigm to be switched around… Obamacare is about restriction and control… Everything that these programs were supposed to fix has gotten worse.”

Trump reminded voters that his goal was to quickly repeal the ACA if he’s elected. “On my first day in office, I am going to ask a Republican Congress to send me a bill to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Perhaps the Democrats realized it was time Bill Clinton put his foot in his mouth. At a stop later the following day in Ohio, the ex-president tried to reverse himself, saying, “We gotta figure out what to do now on health care… Look, the Affordable Health Care Act did a world of good.”

But Clinton still acknowledged that the present system only “works fine” when people receive ACA subsidies or are covered under Medicare or Medicaid.

“The people who are getting killed in this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies,” said Clinton. He pointed out that there were many people suffering under the law, particularly those earning too much to qualify for cheaper insurance.

This wasn’t the first time Clinton has criticized Obamacare. In 2013, the ex-president stated, “there have always been drafting errors, unintended consequences, unanticipated issues.”

At that time, Clinton criticized Obama for telling people they would be able to keep their existing coverage under the new law as the president did after signing the Act. Clinton’s spokesman Angel Urena claimed that Clinton’s comments were “taken out of context,” saying that “while [Clinton] was slightly short-handed, it’s clear to everyone, including President Obama, that improvements are needed.”

Perhaps puzzled, at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest tried to say that Bill Clinton didn’t know what he was talking about. “You’d have to talk to President Clinton [about] exactly what message he was trying to send,” said Earnest.

Whether or not Clinton was going off-script or just had a sudden moment of clarity we don’t know, but one thing is for sure: the Democrats will have to acknowledge the current president’s plan as a failure sooner or later.

Some cynical insiders have said that may have been the plan all along; they point out that the next step after declaring Obamacare a failure might be for the government to take over the program directly and socialize all medicine, meaning that insurance companies wouldn’t be involved at all, and the government would directly manage everyone’s health care.

Indeed, in Clinton’s same speech in Ohio, the former president spoke ominously of a government-run “public option,” saying it was “the change we need” for working-class people.

This could result in everyone getting the same type of horrific care that veterans now shamefully receive at VA hospitals, where sightings of vermin and filth are regular occurrences, and people suffer from bureaucracy and endless delays of their treatment (in some cases even committing suicide while waiting for proper medication and procedures).

Obamacare needs repeal, and fast, if people are to have affordable health insurance in their future. It’s time for Obama to admit his program was based on false premises — that young people would sign up for the program in droves and that insurers would be willing to put up with hundred-million-dollar losses for years.

From its launch until now, it’s been one enormous debacle after another, and people on the fence about the program are getting sick — literally — because of its high costs.

It’s time for voters to take action and demand their representatives repeal the ACA, and implement better options, such as health care savings accounts (HSAs), high-risk insurance pooling, and the ability to buy coverage across state lines, as suggested by Donald Trump and medical professionals.

Health care needs to be more patient-centered and less about government dictating what’s right, what’s wrong and who gets to have which treatment. The disgrace known as Obamacare needs to be stopped today.


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