ObamaCare Disaster May Deliver Mortal Blow To Liberalism
By SCOTT S. POWELL
Posted 05:16 PM ET
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-on-the-right/020614-689137-obamacare-problems-taint-the-idea-of-government-activism-bureaucracy.htm
Although unexpected, the unraveling of the Affordable Care Act may deliver a mortal blow to liberalism.
At the very least, it presents a momentous opportunity for a majority of the American people to recognize that dependence on unaccountable government bureaucracies is a loser's wager.
Since failure is often the best teacher, the ObamaCare fiasco may well catalyze a broad renaissance of appreciation for the power and virtue of self-reliance and choice that only the free market provides.
The fact that ObamaCare is prompting early retirement among doctors and reduced medical school applications, while also creating 16,500 new IRS enforcement agents, reveals just how fundamentally wrongheaded this reform was from the get-go.
Additionally, if more people had understood that ObamaCare was essentially a redistributionist entitlement program that would add to the national debt while turning the American health care system upside down, it would never have passed.
As it was, without a single Republican vote, several Democratic senators had to be bribed by the Obama administration before they would join in jamming the bill through on straight party lines.
Then there's the recent revelation that the bill would not have passed but for the biggest lie of all from President Obama himself. Now everyone knows that if you liked your plan, your doctor and your deductible, you can't keep them.
Health care insurance companies have also been betrayed by the president's executive orders changing coverage rules after the law was enacted — causing actuarial turmoil.
The result is a genuine crisis for liberalism — not the least of which is that government's social contract with the American people has been fundamentally broken, with a majority now feeling that Washington under Obama and progressive Democrats is arbitrary, coercive and untrustworthy.
What the Democratic Party's effort to remake one-sixth of the economy in restructuring health care delivery has totally ignored is the vital role of entrepreneurial input, individual choice and the free flow of information, which are at the heart of delivering quality and low cost in every industry.
It turns out that it is the entrepreneurial drive and the pursuit of excellence, rather than government mandates, that compel doctors to deliver quality care to their patients.
And most of the treatment breakthroughs and cost-efficient solutions in health care come not from government but from medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies driven by entrepreneurs.
The incentives of a competitive free market are the best way to bring health care costs down while also pushing the envelope of improvement and progress through research and discovery.
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