The Democrats’ election hopes in November rest in part on voters coming down with an acute case of amnesia.
Having passed sweeping healthcare legislation in 2010 that raised costs to astronomical levels and limited options for millions of Americans, the Democrats now claim they should be the ones to repair what they ruined in the first place.
It’s understandable if the notion of Democrats fixing healthcare at this stage makes you sick. You’re not alone. Seeing Democrats campaign on improving healthcare for Americans is like seeing a pack of wolves campaign on improving security for a herd of sheep.
Ipsos research director Mallory Newall told The Hill last week that healthcare is a top priority for many Americans and that it’s “what a lot of, particularly Democratic, candidates are focused on.”
Clearly, the Democrats are hoping that most voters can’t remember as far back as 2010, when they forced the passage of Obamacare by deceiving the American people. And they didn’t understand then either. It’s why then Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass the bill to know what’s in the bill.” We know what was in the bill and we aren’t swallowing it again!
Not a single Republican voted for the bill and, as many Republicans predicted, Obamacare turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. It was the legislative equivalent of taking a house that just needed repairs and dousing it with gasoline and lighting a match.
It’s no surprise that a recent analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project found that over half of all midterm campaign ads promoting Democrats at the federal level mention healthcare, but just 13 percent of Democrat ads mentioned Obamacare by name. In other words, Democrats are trying desperately to pretend the Obamacare mess is not their fault.
And what a mess it is.
Obamacare has led to skyrocketing costs and fewer options across the country. The poorly-planned legislation made operating in the marketplaces created by the legislation so expensive for insurers that many have abandoned participating in them altogether.
Indeed, the Affordable Care Act proved to be anything but. The average price of Obamacare silver plansrose 34 percent just this year and premiums are slated to skyrocket even higher in 2019.
As for Obama’s promise that “if you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it”? Over four million people lost their insurance in the last two years alone.
So what’s the Democrats’ proposed magic cure for the ailment they themselves gave America’s healthcare system? “Medicare-for-all” — also known as socialized medicine or government-run healthcare. It’s a really expensive way to give all Americans really bad healthcare.
Yet a number of prominent Democrats have eagerly embraced the call for a socialist healthcare system. Last year a total of 16 Democrat Senators co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bill, and even Barack Obama has endorsed the idea.
The Democrats may try to deceive the American people again, but the record of socialized medicine in other countries proves that government-run healthcare is rationed healthcare. Just look to the United Kingdom and Canada for recent examples of long waiting times, a dearth of treatment options, and death panels. Clearly a small dose of communism is absolutely not what the doctor ordered.
That the Democrats harmed America’s healthcare in reckless devotion to ideology and pursuit of votes is bad enough. That they’re trying to do the exact same thing again — and have the audacity to call it a fix — can’t stand.
The Democrats are the last people in America who have a right to lecture anyone on the issue of healthcare, and voters will remember on Election Day that the real solutions still lie with Donald Trump and the GOP.
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Mike Huckabee was the 44th Governor of Arkansas and a 2016 Republican candidate for president of the United States.
