OBAMACARE
THE LATEST –
Draw attention to the Affordable Care Act's pernicious effects on ordinary
Americans.
By Karl Rove
Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff
to President George
W. Bush, helped organize the political-action committee American
Crossroads.
July 16, 2014 7:11 p.m. ET
Liberal columnists and Democratic strategists
have taken to arguing that ObamaCare is working and no longer a political
negative, implying that Democratic candidates should tout it on the campaign
trail. Republicans should pray they do, assuming the GOP knows how to respond.
As presidential scholar George Edwards III
observed in his 2012 book "Overreach," the Affordable Care Act is
"perhaps the least popular major domestic policy passed in the last
century." It remains so today. A June 3 Fox News poll found 38% were
"glad the health care law passed" while 55% "wish it had never
passed." Only 29% thought "the country is better off" with the
law while 44% said America was "worse off."
But GOP candidates can't simply rely on
attacking Democrats for having voted for ObamaCare or, in the case of
nonincumbents, supporting it. They should draw attention to the law's
pernicious effects on ordinary Americans.
Many people who lost their existing policies
because they didn't comply with ObamaCare's mandates are finding their new
premiums and deductibles are much higher. Republicans should routinely campaign
with families who make this vivid and real by describing how this is affecting
their household budget.
There should be a special emphasis on
appearing with young workers. ObamaCare's "community rating" provision
means young people are charged higher premiums and deductibles than they should
be, to subsidize coverage for older people. Many older workers have bigger
paychecks than the young families forced to shell out more cash than their risk
profile would require.
Lining up in Miami to sign up for mandated health
insurance, March 31. Getty Images
As insurers begin releasing details of next
year's insurance premiums, Republicans should reach out to and appear with
families getting hit by bigger bills. Mr. Obama promised premiums would go down
by $2,500 per family, as did most of the Senate Democrats running for
re-election this fall.
Yet many families have already seen
significant price increases and will continue to see them. Recent analysis from
the think tank America Next revealed that between 2010 and 2013 individuals
suffered $6,039 and families $17,344 in higher premium costs because of
ObamaCare's failure to cut them as promised.
This is in part because an estimated 27% of
people who enrolled in ObamaCare have serious health challenges and draw on
their coverage substantially more than the national average. This ObamaCare
subset is roughly twice as large as the comparable group left with private
insurance in the individual market.
The parade of horribles doesn't end there.
ObamaCare discourages full-time jobs by requiring businesses to cover anyone
working more than 30 hours a week. In June, the economy added a net of 288,000
jobs, but this was the result of America losing 523,000 full-time jobs and
replacing them with 799,000 part-time ones. Only 12,000 of the 288,000 new jobs
added last month were full-time. Appearing with people working part-time but
desperate for full-time work will give a human face to the law's painful
realities.
Then there are jobs never created because of
ObamaCare. Small business owners are afraid of hitting the law's threshold of
50 full-time workers, which then makes them subject to mandates and penalties.
Campaigning with small business people concerned about expanding their
companies would be useful for corralling votes.
Health-care professionals like doctors,
nurses, aides and hospital workers are seeing first hand the harm ObamaCare
causes in their relationship with patients and their ability to provide quality
care. Families who have lost access to treasured doctors and familiar networks
should also be heard from.
While most of the damage from raiding
Medicare to pay for ObamaCare is yet to come, seniors with Medicare Advantage
policies are seeing their benefits crimped by ObamaCare's cuts to Medicare
spending. They, too, can be effective witnesses.
By humanizing ObamaCare's shortfalls through
stories from ordinary people, Republicans will help explode the myth of liberal
competence and compassion, keep this issue fresh through the fall and cause
voters to hold Democrats accountable at the polls.
Putting ObamaCare in the center of their
campaigns will also force GOP candidates to spell out what they would do
instead of ObamaCare. Americans do not want to return to the broken status quo
in place before Mr. Obama made an even bigger mess of our health-care system.
ObamaCare was unpopular when it passed.
Republican candidates must show through real-life examples why those concerns
were fully justified, and how millions of lives have been unnecessarily
disrupted by this liberal calamity.
Mr. Rove, a former deputy chief of staff
to President George
W. Bush, helped organize the political-action committee American
Crossroads.
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL - Reining inObamaCare—and the President Halbig
v. Burwell is about determining whether the president, like an autocrat, can
levy taxes on his own. July 22,
2014
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WALL STREET
JOURNAL -Rulings Cloud Health Subsidy
- Two Appeals Courts Split on Tax Credits ForMillions July 23, 2014
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THE WALL
STREET JOURNAL -- The Short Unhappy Life ofObamaCare – June 10, 2014
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TIME -- The Hidden Cliffs in Obamacare - As the Affordable Care Act becomes reality, so do some
of its little-known inequities - May 29, 2014
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AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM The Fiscal Cliff's Hidden $1 Trillion TaxHike
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Higher
premiums could really kneecap the economic recovery -
January 1, 2014
