Why Conservatives Want their Republican Representatives to Stand Firm!

ObamaCare wipes out health care plans in Alabama, New Jersey

Bad news arrived in mailboxes across New Jersey, as people discovered their health-insurance plans had been wiped out by ObamaCare.  Plans that didn’t measure up to the mandates imposed by the Affordable Care Act were being canceled, despite President Obama’s infamous vow that “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.  No one will take it away, no matter what.”

How many folks in New Jersey were affected by this latest failure of Obama’s campaign promises?  Oh, only about eight hundred thousand or so.  The Star-Ledger reports this development “surprised some who were unaware that provisions in the new law known as ‘Obamacare’ were forcing insurance companies to scrap some plans they had previously offered.”

…. New Jersey and Alabama provide large-scale examples of disruptions happening across the country because of ObamaCare.  The New York Post talked with a very unhappy camper in Brooklyn who doesn’t understand why nobody else in the media wants to discuss her $250 per month ObamaCare premium hike:

    “The president of the United States promised me repeatedly that if I liked my plan, I could keep it. End of story. This was a lie, and I will never for forgive him or anyone who cooperates with him for this egregious deception,” said Heather Cross, a 45-year-old widow from Williamsburg.

    Cross said she was doing just fine with insurance bought under a “sole proprietor plan” that allowed self-employed individuals to pool for coverage with small businesses, a policy unique to New York.

    She said she was paying $568 a month. …

Furthermore, there’s no reason for anyone to warmly embrace the notion that people who make a bit less money than she does will receive taxpayer assistance to cover their $2500 premium hikes.  The middle class will be transformed into another welfare dependency… which was one of ObamaCare’s true goals all along. …

The Heritage Foundation collected some more stories from people facing budget-busting premium increases under ObamaCare, and is encouraging more people to send in their stories:

    George Schwab, who lives in North Carolina, was notified in a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield on September 23 that his current plan doesn’t meet Obamacare’s benefit requirements and would be canceled at the end of the year. While Blue Cross did suggest a comparable plan, it was $980 more than what he now pays.

    The President told the American people numerous times that… ‘If you like your coverage, you can keep it,’” Schwab told The Charlotte Observer. “How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it if the premium has been increased 430 percent in one year?”

    Michael Yount and his wife, a retired couple in North Carolina, buy their individual insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield and pay about $380 a month with an $11,000 deductible. But they were just informed their new plan will be three times the price, costing them $1,124.50 a month, The Christian Science Monitor reported. The couple said they plan to drop out of formal health insurance, pay the penalty, and “self-insure.”

    Cindy Vinson in California “will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy,” reports theSan Jose Mercury News. She is an Obama voter who was surprised by the personal impact of Obamacare. “Of course, I want people to have health care,” Vinson said. “I just didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally.”

None of these people have been allowed to make rational decisions about what they want, and what they’re willing to pay for it.  None of them were dealt with honestly by President Obama and his allies.  They were lied to, pure and simple – kept sedated with phony promises that nobody would take their preferred health care plans away, period, while a massive bill was shoved through Congress by people who didn’t read it.  Now they’re being told to shut up and accept the New Normal, no matter how badly the President’s program fails them.

The Founding Fathers would not be condemning House Republicans for their effort to defund ObamaCare. They would be applauding them. On the subject of who authorizes spending, the Constitution could not be more clear. According to Article 1, Section. 7, "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives."

It is the job of the House of Representatives to spend, or not spend, the people's money. Based solely on the huge deficits our nation now faces, they have been up to this point derelict in their duty. Refusing to fund ObamaCare, whose exorbitant costs and incredible waste are now becoming apparent, would reassert the fiscal function the "Great Compromise" entrusted them with and demonstrate their care for how the people's money is disposed of.

All of this illustrates why the debate over whether to defund ObamaCare or find another path to revise it is most certainly related our national debt, the debt ceiling and the moral obligation we have in stopping reckless spending.

Those of us who are Middle Class Americans; those of us who are working hard to do more than just survive – but to THRIVE – we want our elected officials to STOP this monstrosity that will make our healthcare worse not better; while dramatically increasing our monthly expenses. That's immoral!

Bottom line – using the force of law to create a command and control over our entire healthcare system and forcing Americans to buy policies that are double what they already pay – is immoral and unconstitutional.

We correctly call this ‘Soft Tyranny’.

Links, Sources & Resources

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/11/obamacare-wipes-out-health-care-plans-in-alabama-new-jersey/

How Much Is Your Health Insurance Going Up?– Heritage.org

Obamacare causes insurance companies to scrap some plans, create new ones – NJ Star Ledger

The Founders vs. ObamaCare - The Founding Fathers would not be condemning House Republicans for their effort to defund ObamaCare. They would be applauding them. (The American Thinker).

Oh.. The Republicans Shutdown the Govt. - Right.... Somehow I missed that.

Via Thomas Sowell & Brandon Crocker

There is really nothing complicated about the facts. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted all the money required to keep all government activities going -- except for ObamaCare.

This is not a matter of opinion. You can check the Congressional Record.

As for the House of Representatives' “RIGHT” to grant or withhold money, that is not a matter of opinion either. You can check the Constitution of the United States. All spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives, which means that Congressmen there have the ‘POWER’ to decide whether or not they want to spend money on a particular government activity.

Whether ObamaCare is good, bad or indifferent is a matter of opinion.

ObamaCare is indeed "the law of the land," as its supporters keep saying, and the Supreme Court has upheld its Constitutionality.

But it is a matter of ‘FACT’ that members of the House of Representatives have the ‘AUTHORITY’ to make spending decisions based on their opinion. That authority does not evaporate into thin air simply because President Obama, Harry Reid or any elected official decides to have a hissy fit.

The whole point of having a division of powers within the federal government is that each branch can decide independently what it wants to do or not do, regardless of what the other branches do, when exercising the powers specifically granted to that branch by the Constitution.

If Senator Reid and President Obama refuse to accept the money required to run all other government activities simply because it leaves out the money they want to run ObamaCare; that is their choice. But that is also their responsibility.

According to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, no one in the legislative branch has any business trying to change anything regarding Obamacare because “it is the law.” However! - Obamacare would not pass today. It would not have passed two years ago. It only became law because Obama’s election in 2008 ushered in short-lived Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate including a “super-majority” in the Senate, which allowed the Democrats to ram the legislation through even though no one was given a chance to read it, let alone understand it (in Nancy Pelosi’s famous words, Congress had to pass it in order to see what was in it). Even then, it only made it through Congress due to political gamesmanship. As a direct result of public opposition to this legislation, Democrats promptly lost the House and nearly lost the Senate. Yet Harry Reid says this piece of legislation is so sacrosanct that Republicans are “insane” to try to change it?

Though the President claims he should not have to agree to any alterations to Obamacare demanded by the House of Representatives, he has felt free to make changes on his own, without any input from Congress. (Indeed, he has felt free to usurp Congressional authority to change other legislation, as well, such as immigration laws.) On Obamacare, he has made such alterations as delaying the employer mandate for a year and has made other changes, without Congressional input, benefiting unions, and changing how various aspects of the law will be administered and enforced.

The Republicans in the House have essentially said, fine, we’ll approve all the funding you want in the continuing resolution, but all those breaks you’ve given to various groups need to be extended to all Americans (achieved by delaying for one year, just as Obama has done for the employer mandate, the “individual mandate” for ordinary Americans to buy Obama-approved health insurance). In response, the President and the Democratic leadership have gone ballistic. They rave about Republican “irresponsibility” and pound their chests, indignant that Obama should have to negotiate anything with the Congress. He’s the President, by gosh! He just won an election! Well, guess what? Every member of the House won elections the very same day Obama did. Yes, Congress has to deal with reality of Obama in the White House, but Obama has to deal with the reality of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law that governs the operations of our American democracy that Harry Reid supposedly cherishes. It provides for separation of powers that the Obama administration consistently ignores. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have no problem with this unconstitutional expansion of executive powers (at least when a Democrat resides in the White House). It also provides the Congress of the United States the power to fund, or not to fund, various activities, whether or not previous Congresses have approved such activities. President Obama and the Democratic leadership do object to this (at least when Republicans control the House). To them, laws passed by Democrat majorities are inviolable and can only be changed by Democrats, even when Democrats are no longer in the majority.

When Barack Obama keeps claiming that it is some new outrage for those who control the money to try to change government policy by granting or withholding money; that is simply a bald-faced lie. You can check the history of other examples of "legislation by appropriation" as it used to be called.

None of this is rocket science. But unless the Republicans get their side of the story out -- and articulation has never been their strong suit -- the lies will win. More important, the whole country will lose.

There is a vocal audience of American Voters and citizens who are shouting from the house tops that they do not want this law to remain – that it should be repealed and replaced. This is not demonstrated only by consistent poll numbers; but by the FACT that dozens of Republican candidates were elected by THE PEOPLE to the House & Senate in 2010. The fact that the President forced this law on the people became the primary factor that drove these successful Republican candidacy’s in 2010 – Obama and his loyal followers only have themselves to blame. These candidates won their elections because they PROMISED the voters to do all they can to stop, repeal & replace this job killing, economy tanking, healthcare industry destroying law that is never going to deliver what it promises. There will be no free healthcare – There will still be at least 20 million uninsured people – The costs will and are already going up & premiums are already skyrocketing.

Links & Sources

Who Shut Down the Government? – by Thomas Sowell

His Imperial Presidency – by Brandon Crocker

The Budget Process - Authorization vs. Appropriation