To the Editor:
I am writing in response to the letter titled "Making Care Affordable" from the July 18-24 edition of The Connection. This opinion article says that we should all celebrate now that Obamacare has been upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax. The article supposes that now millions of Americans will have access to care, as if they don’t already, and that all our ills will be solved and we’ll live happily ever after. Well I’m sorry. I don’t believe in fairy tales, and that is exactly what Obamacare is. The truth about Obamacare is that it is a tax, it is not affordable, and many Americans will not be able to retain the doctors of their choice.
From the beginning, we were told that it was not a tax, yet the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court upheld it on the basis of it being a tax. Now the federal government can force us to buy something we don’t want or pay a penalty for not doing so. Sorry, this is not the America I know and love where federal bureaucrats now have the power to dictate what and how much of anything we need to buy for our families.
We were told that health care will be "affordable," yet the March CBO scoring of this disgraceful law shows that it will be nothing of the sort. It has updated its cost estimate for the first ten years to be 1.76 trillion dollars, up from its original scoring of $940 billion when this was signed into law. How will this country, with an already downgraded debt rating, an anemic economic growth rate of 1 percent, staggering unemployment and underemployment, and a President that is outright hostile to free enterprise, ever pay for such a monstrous new government entitlement? My liberal friends will say let’s make the evil 1 percent pay for it. But with only half the working population even paying federal income taxes, I think the answer is we won’t pay for it. We will pass this burden on to our children and grandchildren and their grandchildren.
We were told that more people will have coverage under Obamacare and that we will be able to keep the doctors we like. Yet the March CBO scoring shows that 3 million more people will require health care through Medicaid, and that private employers will drop their coverage for employees, forcing more people onto Medicaid rolls and into government run health exchanges. And from the beginning, Obamacare cut $500 billion from Medicare.
So once again, I say this American is not celebrating. The Affordable Care Law is anything but affordable. This disastrous law is full of empty promises and represents a heavy handed federal government bent on eroding our freedoms and burdening generations of Americans with outrageous bills. I live in the real world where budgets are made and benefits get paid for, not passed on to future generations of Americans not even born yet. I pray the rest of my fellow citizens will see through the fairy tale that is Obamacare and elect representatives in November who will overturn this despicable law.
Gina Ryan
Great Falls