There is no confusion about the premise upon which the President sold his most hopeful fans on his goals that put him into office. It’s about time that we stop being distracted by the misuse of the word success. Goals help define action, failure to adhere to goals and measure every action in terms of its relation to goals leads to what we have, tepid leadership with big mouths running around enacting piece after piece of flawed, ineffective, and expensive legislation with bad results that leadership is “surprised” by.
YouTube preserves candidate’s Obama’s Healthcare Address in Iowa City May 29, 2007…Go to minute 2:19:
“Today I want to lay out the details of that plan. It’s a plan that not only guarantees coverage for every American but also brings down the cost of healthcare and reduces every family’s premiums by as much as $2,500.”
Guaranteed coverage for every American? Not so. Bringing down the cost of healthcare? Every indicator has health care prices rising. And as for the premiums? Yeah, right. By a real measure, goals versus goals met, Obamacare is a dismal failure.
But instead of putting it aside until a new set of realistic goals could be met and approved of by the American people, the law was passed, simply for the sake of passing some law.
This is a HUGE warning to the American people regarding immigration reform under this President’s watch. Success for him means passing something, anything so that he can say he did it, though the “it” that’s done could very well injure more Americans.
The importance of reviewing the initial premise is that the achievement of the goal or goals is what defines success or failure, not the redefining the goals to fit the experience. Sure, the President can reframe or come clean with the goal that simply getting more people to buy health insurance or else they face a fine was his goal, and likely that number will increase somewhat, indicating at least a right direction for his goal.
However, that was not the goal for anyone with experience in or with healthcare and/or health insurance. That certainly was not the winning goal articulated by the President that pushed him into office.
The President made it very clear, very early that he simply wanted something he could call healthcare related passed under his watch. By that definition only Obamacare is a success. But the goals that won Obama the election were not met.
Arguably, Obamacare has worsened our situation as a nation because while some people will win virtually free premiums under Obamacare and its codified entitlement for exchange users, at least for this year, the fact that only some people are eligible for this new federal entitlement has left everyone outside of this special legislative perk paying more for less.
Today the news is obsessed with the “glitches” in enrolling for a program we never wanted, in a program that promises increased expense, reduced access, and less coverage for meaningful and necessary medical treatment for most Americans.
Long before the latest failure of Obamacare to achieve its promised enrollment performance, Obamacare failed on every other front promised by Obama as the justification for the law. There is no possibility for success of Obamacare, because the PPACA is not what was promised and will never be what was promised to the American people.
Therefore, breathe, it makes little to no difference whether your ride to a place you didn’t want to go is a smooth one or takes a little longer.
For those frustrated by the lack of access to the healthcare.gov site, first, you’ve got till March.
Second, enjoy the last days of your personal data not being exposed to another avenue of breach through the mismanagement and sloppiness of Obamacare which exchanges information with the IRS, which none of us can even anticipate how far that will go (see recent disclosures of the credit bureau Experian’s misuse of personal data in an article entitled, “Experian sold consumer data to ID Theft Service,” appearing in Krebs on Security, 10/13/13).
Third, use the extra time to plan ahead, use the Kaiser Permanente calculator to get a general idea of what your premiums will cost and instead of looking to be one of the $0 premium payers, make sure that the health insurance you purchase will be able to function as real insurance and help you avoid bankruptcy in the event you get sick.
The President loves words as a means of deception. Simply attaching the word success to failure is no more true than throwing around the term middle class as he cannibalizes the formerly largest segment of our country to preserve the realm of the rich and slightly improve the realm of the very poor. Simply pretending that health insurance is equivalent to health care does not make it so. Simply calling for amnesty is not immigration reform, and certainly requires no legislation, as his executive order giving amnesty to young illegals has already proven.
Obamacare is not good. But not because the individual features of the law are being put off, or delayed or even botched, but because it is not the law it was supposed to be and does not address the problems it was supposed to address and because in fact, it makes many things worse.
Attaching the word “success” to such performance also shows an inability on the part of this Administration to outline goals and to work towards those goals, the measure attached to any meaningful measure of success.
