The Tonya Harding Effect and Obamacare
In 1994, champion figure skater Tonya Harding and her ex-husband conspired with bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt to attack rival skater Nancy Kerrigan during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Eckhardt followed Harding to Detroit and struck her leg just above the knee with a club. His goal was to break her leg. Although he was unsuccessful, the severe bruising kept her out of the competition. This unprecedented attack shocked the world and was headline news for months.
In 2010, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi conspired with 220 members of Congress and 60 Senators to attack the American people with a “club” called Obamacare. This attack was more successful than the Tonya Harding affair. It snapped America’s leg at the knee and is responsible for much of the economic hardship we are suffering today. Obamacare encompasses 18% of our economy and affects every citizen, except, of course, those in Washington who foisted this albatross on us and exempted themselves from its resulting poor healthcare and unreasonable expenses.
Many of us are already seeing our premiums going up, and products we once had, and liked, are not available now. Obama promised us that the insurance exchange would save families as much as $2,300 a year. However, according to the IRS the cheapest Obama plan in 2016 will cost each family $20,000. If a family doesn’t have insurance, it will pay a penalty of about $200 a month. This means low income Americans have a choice looming before them. Do they pay $1,667 a month for insurance that barely covers their family’s needs, or do they pay $200 a month penalty and go without insurance?
Obamacare forces us to buy products we don’t need or want. The one-size-fits-all package includes things many of us will never use. Why would a sixty-year-old grandmother need maternity insurance, or treatment for drug addiction? These are both products that many of us don’t need, yet they make us buy them whether we want them or not.
It is only going to get worse as doctors leave their practices and they add millions to the healthcare roles. Eighty-three percent of doctors have considered leaving the medical field because of Obamacare and 45% of those probably will. Even if most of them stay on, we will still have a shortage of at least 90,000 doctors by 2020. California is already facing the issue of too few doctors to care for their ballooning patient rolls. There is even talk of allowing physician assistants and nurse practitioners to set up private practices, and to allow pharmacists and optometrist to serve as primary care providers. We may have platinum insurance, but if doctors aren’t available, we will still be waiting weeks for an appointment, or sitting for hours in crowded waiting rooms full of crying babies with runny noses and earaches.
As these leg breaking laws come into force, we see increasing numbers of people who can barely afford their family’s insurance being pushed out of jobs that gave them choices and pride in themselves. Now their employers must reduce their hours, causing insurance to be a luxury.
Universal healthcare is supposed to give everyone equal medical services, but it will only give us equal suffering and pain. This “club” called Obamacare landed a crippling blow to Americans everywhere. Nancy Kerrigan went on to win silver in the 1994 Winter Olympics after recovering from her attack and. Like Kerrigan, if America is going to compete again we must fight back against this unprecedented attack. Our damage is much worse than Kerrigan’s injuries, but if we work together, we can win the Gold in 2014.
