OUR VIEW: The austerity of their ideas

May 27 2012 - 9:39pm


Brain dead
Brain dead

The most frustrating thing about the debate over what is described -- by supporters and opponents -- as Obamacare is that its detractors are focusing nearly 100 percent of their energy on tearing down the new health care law. Virtually no energy is spent by these opponents on how they intend to fix the problem of health care insurance access if they get their wish and Obamacare is stymied, whether in the courts, or by a President Romney, or via legislation.

The austerity that is found within the ideas of Obamacare opponents is pitiful. Frankly, we're sick of listening to the pledges by Sen. Orrin Hatch, and many others pols to be fair, that they are "fighting" with all their might that supposedly dangerous enemy to freedom that is Obamacare. Do they mean the Obamacare that allows sons and daughters to have health care until they are 26? Do they mean the Obamacare that ends insurance companies from denying health care insurance to very ill persons? What does Sen. Hatch think about the 62,000 persons with pre-existing conditions who may lose their newly acquired health care if Obamacare is defeated?

Let's make something very clear: One of the reasons that President Barack Obama and the Congress passed a health care insurance reform law is because there are insurance companies out there that would choose a patient's death over providing insurance. Obamacare was passed because otherwise responsible people were being bankrupted due to medical conditions.

Obamacare is a recognition that in some cases, government needs to correct holes in the free enterprise that harms people.

Opposition to Obamacare is not principled by most of its opponents. Very few people are offering alternatives to Obamacare. There's a reason for that. One only has to look at the deceased political career of former Sen. Bob Bennett, who attempted to craft a bipartisan health care reform bill. That bill was clearly scuttled and later was used as ammunition against Bennett, who failed to even survive a GOP state convention.

Hatch, who seeks to serve 42 years in the U.S. Senate, noted Bennett's demise. One can be sure no chance of serious alternatives to Obamacare will come from our senior senator's lips until he is safely re-elected.

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