On July 1, 2012, Doyle McManus writes in the Los Angeles Times that the future of the Affordable Care Act depends almost completely on the November election.
Although Americans like many of the Affordable Care Act‘s individual pieces, polls show that most voters are understandably skeptical that the law will do everything Obama has promised — improve medical care, slow the growth of costs and cut the federal deficit all at the same time.
Capitalizing on that skepticism, Republicans have waged an effective and well-funded campaign to raise fears about everything that could go wrong. So far, more than $235 million has been spent on television advertising alone. That has brought us ads like the one a conservative group aired last month featuring Dr. Ami Siems, an appealing family doctor from Oklahoma, who frets on camera: “I don’t want anything to come between my patients and me — especially Washington bureaucrats.”
Now the court, by ruling that the law’s penalty for not purchasing insurance is actually a tax, has given the GOP a new line of attack: the charge that the healthcare law was actually a stealthy way of pushing through a tax increase. (In fact, the individual mandate penalty is expected to produce less than 5% of the new revenue in the law after it’s phased in; the biggest new taxes, which will fall on high-income taxpayers and insurance providers, were labeled as taxes all along.)
DOCUMENT: Supreme Court ruling on healthcare law
The battle for public opinion isn’t over, though. Despite the concentrated assaults and a decidedly weak defense by Democrats, attitudes about the law, while negative, aren’t overwhelmingly so. In an NBC News-Wall Street Journal Poll last month, the law was on the losing side of popular support, 41% to 35%, with 24% undecided — hardly a landslide.
The law’s future now depends almost completely on the November election. Romney has promised to work for its repeal on his first day in office if he wins. A Romney victory would probably also produce Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House, making repeal possible, although the Senate’s rules that require 60 votes for major action would make it difficult.
While there is no question that this legislation benefits millions more Americans, this is a case of committing to spending more money, derived either through taxation redistribution or debt borrowing, to provide social benefit to those who are unable to do so on their own. The Republicans call this Socialism. The Democrats call this Social Responsibility. They are both right.
As long as a significant minority, even a defined majority, dependent on disappearing jobs and welfare persists in our society, so-called “safety net” programs will be necessary to help those who need help.
Long-term though, we should be forging policies and programs to broaden private, individual participation in the FUTURE means of producing our products and services resulting from technological innovation and invention.
Obama and all others putting in a claim to represent the American people need to acknowledge the futility of “job creation,” alone, whether government or private sector. The future direction is exponential job destroying or job degrading technological innovation and invention. And if our so-called leaders cannot speak to this all-encompasing subject and put us on the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice made possible by the “digital computerized machine” age, then they are either ignorantly ill-informed or idiots. Or possibly owned by the powerful interest that have successful hoarded the ownership of the economy’s wealth and do not want the majority to know the workings of their success.
The Just Third Way that I and others advocate provides the path to prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice, while preserving the private property free market economy. Over-time this approach will strengthen individuals and empower them to acquire self-financed income-producting productive capital assets and provide affluence and the means to pay directly for products and services they choose to favor, with far less dependency on government support. To realize this goal requires BOLD leadership, which thus far has not surfaced. It also require that the national debate focus on this issue going forward.
