Does Nancy Believe What She's Saying?

I was just listening to the minority leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, one of the "clowns" among the Democrat congressional leadership, as characterized by Donald Trump in a tweet yesterday.

As the Republican leadership was busy getting a cure for Obamacare together, Mrs. Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and a few unrecognizable other Democrat leaders gathered to make a series of statements about Obamacare.  It was remarkable for the series of strawmen (and straw-women?) posed, stating things that Republicans never said, things that certainly were not true, and then saying why this was going to be a problem.

They put together their "Make America Sick Again" line, which each of the speakers made sure they put into their statements, as they were making idiotic statements suggesting that Obamacare had done anything good that was going away.

Schumer even said -- and this is hysterical -- that "if the Republicans think they can keep the good parts of Obamacare and get rid of the rest, and it will still work, they're sadly mistaken."  Which means that Schumer thinks that there is a lot of garbage in Obamacare, and if it weren't there, the law would collapse, right?  That's his statement.  He doesn't get that as being precisely what's wrong with the law in the first place.

But let's stick with Mrs. Pelosi, she of the "You have to pass it to know what's in it" line back when the bill was passed with exactly zero consultation with Republicans and zero Republican votes, stuffed under "budget reconciliation" to avoid opposition.

Mrs. Pelosi stated three things that Obamacare was supposed to do, and then tried to state, against all facts, that it had succeeded at them:

- Lower costs of health care.  OK, it didn't; health costs are still rising, and insurance costs, especially for those who actually had to buy Obamacare, have skyrocketed.  I wrote of my own situation, where our private health insurance options (I do not have an employer) shrank in 2015 to exactly three, meaning that I was luckier than the 35% of USA counties with only one insurance company providing policies.  My monthly insurance went from $550 in 2014 to $1,092 in 2015 with no change in health.  But at least I got pediatric dentistry covered under my new policy for my non-existent dependent children (oh yes, read the link).

- Improved service.  I don't know if she meant "better actual health care", or "better coverage", or "better interaction with insurance companies" or "better results for the Cubs."  The Cubs did better.  The coverage, not so much, given that at the same time Obamacare removed our option for a high-deductible, low-cost policy (as a healthy couple in our sixties, that was our choice), it quickly raised deductibles on existing policies.  See the previous paragraph; not only did insurance costs go up but so did the out-of-pocket costs to make up for the high deductibles.

- Increase access.  This is the sad joke.  "Ohhhh, 25 million people have health care they wouldn't have had, you can't take that away, you nasty Republicans!"  But access has not changed.  First, a little more than half of the 25 million got their policies through the Medicaid expansion, not from the Obamacare exchanges.  Second, those without insurance always had access; hospitals could not turn them away.

What they got was actually a gunpoint mandate that they buy a policy or be fined.  It's pretty much like looking at prison as a source of three meals a day, and claiming that it's a good way to get fed properly.  Gee, they increased access to health insurance all right, but it was under the notion that you will buy access or we will fine you. And then claiming that because of the threat, we're better off.  Nanny state, right?

Nancy Pelosi can't possibly actually believe that any of the things she is saying are true, let alone that they are good for the country.  Of course, she has a solid leftist constituency in her district in very leftist San Francisco, and commutes to Washington, meaning that she never sees a human being from the majority of voters in the 49 states and all but five counties in California which combined to elect Donald Trump as the next president.

If she believes it -- if Schumer and the rest of the "clowns" believe it -- I certainly don't want what they are smoking.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.