This just in…Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollments are down 13 percent this year and the nanny-state guardians are busy blaming Republicans. Lesli Dach, chair of Protect Our Care, claims “the administration [has] sabotaged open enrollment.” The Kaiser Foundation claims only 1/4 of new enrollees have seen enrollment ads, compared to 1/2 on Obama’s watch (during the 2013 roll-out). California reports it is spending $100 million to ensure residents shop its state-run health-insurance market.
Actually, the federal government has focused on re-enrollment advertising, meaning new enrollees would see fewer ads, if they saw any. After five years of a government program (of which only Sleeping Beauty would be unaware), it makes sense to change the ad campaign. Mr. Dach does not see it that way: “This is affordable coverage the people need and want, but [they] simply don’t know about the deadline and are not fully aware how affordable health care is for them.”
This is the problem with progressives: they fall in love with an entitlement program…often (like Mr. Dach) making a career out of it…and define success by the number of enrollees, as if they are selling Costco memberships. For this reason, nanny-state guardians cannot connect lower Obamacare enrollment to happier households. Rather than credit the improving job market, in which more Americans get employer-provided health insurance, Dach and his ilk see conspiratorial Republicans. Obamacare continues to generate BS excuses of which progressives should be ashamed. Hey – – it began with a whopper: “we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.”
Progressives, such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, were outraged when 2017 tax-reform freed millions of self-employed Americans from the individual mandate and when HHS introduced scaled-down plans (allowing a 64-year-old widower to buy a plan without pregnancy coverage). Millions of Americans are opting out of Obamacare exchanges, which is freedom to choose in conservative circles and a setback to progressives that want government to beg and beat us to accept entitlements.
Let’s revisit Dach’s America in which the people aren’t aware Obamacare is what they need and want. Dach sees a nation of Gomer Pyles, who will forget to carry their M-16s as they engage the Taliban…or eat a healthy diet and exercise daily…or save for their retirement…or buy car insurance. In Dach’s America, a socialist government must legislate the pursuit of happiness to accommodate the lowest common denominator at all costs. He has it mostly wrong. While it is right to offer a safety net, it is wrong to burden the entire population with mis-managed entitlement costs.
Declining Obamacare enrollments are reflective of the American Spirit: the cultural advantage that made the USA the world’s most prosperous nation. This culture encourages responsible individuals and households to create a population who willingly paddle their own canoes and happily compete to get ahead financially. The nanny-state’s obsession with equal outcomes for all threatens this American Spirit by devaluing the benefits of self-regulation (e.g. preventative healthcare) and competition (e.g. hard work). Hint: competing to get ahead drives American innovation and prosperity, thereby lifting everyone.
In Eat The Rich, P.J. O’Rourke makes a convincing argument that culture – not government policy – creates rich nations. He simplifies the five nanny-state promises (everyone is entitled to a college education, a good job, good house, good healthcare and good retirement) to illustrate what it means to hard-working, tax-paying Americans, who comprise a super-majority of the population.
Everyone is entitled to MY college education. This is an out-dated notion in today’s economy, which actually needs workers schooled in the industrial arts (like Germany). The whole point of college admissions is to place the best and brightest students in a competitive cauldron to create unequal outcomes.
Everyone is entitled to MY job. The US economy is the envy of the world because competition is allowed to reward the best and punish the worst. Furthermore, most guys on the loading dock know why the company CEO makes the most money: business hierarchies are supposed to be Darwinian and not Utopian.
Everyone is entitled to MY house. If the sub-prime-mortgage fiasco didn’t cure progressives of this dream, they are brain-dead. Home ownership is as much about responsibility and liability, as it is about aspirations and reward for success.
Everyone is entitled to MY healthcare. This notion is absurd because equal outcomes are unattainable. When HHS makes fatso jog in place for 30 minutes at the barbecue window, and increases cigarette taxes to pay for 100% of cancer treatment, then we can have this conversation.
Everyone is entitled to MY retirement. I will sign onto this progressive myth as soon as Democrats pass legislation that converts every defined-benefit plan (NY public employees) into a defined-contribution plan (my 401K), starting with their own cushy retirements.
The decline in ACA enrollment is proof that the rights of the individual can triumph over nanny-state tyranny. Asian students should prevail over Harvard affirmative action because all discrimination is wrong. Republicans should offer scaled-back health plans because it is wrong to make senior citizens pay for maternity coverage. The Supreme Court should rule against public employee unions because it is wrong to make individuals pay dues against his or her will. As the Rascals sang it: people everywhere just got to be free.