We’ve talked a lot about liberal failures on gun rights, freedom of religion, and the war on terror, and Democrats have gone out of their way to run to the hard left of the American public on these issues. There’s a sense that on those issues alone, Hillary Clinton may be unlectable. Still, the Dem get out the vote machine is strong, and with the GOP divided, it’s likely to be a close race.
Unless people start to notice the failure that is Obamacare. As Ben Domenech notes:
Don’t look now, but the president’s signature domestic policy, his namesake health care law, is doing very poorly. It just received its worst news yet, when the nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth, broached the possibility that it could exit the health insurance exchange due to its inability to find profits.]
Its losses from participating in the exchange were simply impossible to maintain. If other insurers follow suit, those left behind will likely raise their rates even more.
To make matters worse, insurers are worried that they won’t get an expected taxpayer bailout for their massive losses thanks to a 2014 change to the existing law inserted by Sen. Marco Rubio into the so-called “Cromnibus” spending bill late last year.
The Obama administration is now scrambling to find another way to bail out the insurers, itself an admission that the exchange cannot function without massive amounts of corporate welfare.At root, the problem stems from the fact that it has turned out to be far more difficult to get young, healthy people to sign up for plans in the exchanges, and the population is therefore older and sicker than insurers had expected and the Obama administration had predicted.
None of this was hard to predict. The fact of the matter is drug costs were driven both by the high cost of development and regulation and massive, market distorting government price interventions. Doubling down on such a strategy has created an environment where, for many, it’s cheaper to go to the doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics than it is to buy Sudafed. As Domenech notes, it’s already having an effect.
Once Obamacare launched, it was supposed to be a political boon for Democrats. It was supposed to give them the ability to count on a newly engaged group of Americans who saw the government as providing them significant and helpful subsidies that prevented them from being concerned about their health coverage. Instead, its mismanagement and failure to live up to President Obama’s promises has given Republicans an opportunity they intend to exploit.
So does Hillary Clinton really have the wherewithal, in an era of such distrust for the government to manage anything right, to make the case for a government-run nationwide single-payer system for all? Does she have the boldness to argue that a government which has thoroughly mismanaged Veterans Affairs and struggled to launch a website will manage health care better for the entire population? That seems a heavy lift for an already challenging election year, especially for a candidate more comfortable playing small ball politically.
Expect Hillary to demonize drug companies and push a solution that goes far deeper down the publicly funded health insurance rabbit hole. It might not work, but it’s the only card she’s got to play.
AAN Staff
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