Good Riddance Day Obamacare Schadenfreude

Today, the Washington Post informs me (somewhere on page A3; but I found it at Reuters) that today  is "Good Riddance Day":

The annual Good Riddance Day event, held three days before New Year's Eve, allows people to symbolically purge bad memories by putting photos, documents or written reminders through a massive paper shredder in hopes of clearing a path to a brighter future.

Thomas Avila, 26, one of the first people in line on for the shredder, said 2013 was a roller coaster for him. One of the hardest parts, he said, was telling friends and family he was gay and finding some of them could not accept him.

Yep, another made up liberal celebration designed to put down the religious and generally acknowledged secular holidays like Christmas and New Years, and substitute their own vision of a dark and oppressive America to justify their anger and destruction of the current system.  Alas, we cannot put Obamacare in that giant shredder; the full effect of the law, to the extent that Preznit Obama actually enforces it, occurs on Jan. 1. So the Obamacare Schadenfreude continues.

Victor Davis Hanson identifies the true victims: Who Will Speak For The Long-Neglected Middle Class?

On almost every left-right issue that divides Democrats and Republicans — as well as Republicans themselves — there is a neglected populist constituency. The result is that populist politics are largely caricatured as Tea Party extremism — and a voice for the middle class is largely absent.

The problem with ObamaCare is that its well-connected and influential supporters — pet businesses, unions and congressional insiders — have already won exemption from it. The rich will always have their concierge doctors and Cadillac health plans. The poor can usually find low-cost care through Medicaid, federal clinics and emergency rooms.

In contrast, those who have lost their preferred individual plans, or will pay higher premiums and deductibles, are largely members of the self-employed middle class. They are too poor to have their own exclusive health care coverage but too wealthy for most government subsidies. So far, ObamaCare is falling hardest on the middle class. . .

That's why you rob banks; that's where the money is.

Compelling Evidence for a Market-Driven Health Care System

The United States does not have a private-sector health insurance system, let alone a functioning competitive market for insurance or health services. In fact, the federal government has been the dominant force in American health care for decades, long before the recent massive expansion of the government’s role in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Through overly restrictive policies, Medicare, Medicaid, and tax subsidies, the federal government has dominated the operation of the U.S. health care system for the past half-century. It is primarily federal policies that are responsible for driving up costs and making health insurance unaffordable for so many Americans.

The argument over the future of U.S. health care is essentially an argument over how to best allocate scarce resources in this large and important sector of the national economy. Proponents of centralized government control of health care are fond of saying that reliance on a private-sector approach in the U.S. has been tried and failed. According to their arguments, most Americans are enrolled in private insurance, costs are high, and the insurance is insecure. They claim that the private marketplace is therefore to blame for many of the problems prevalent in U.S. health care.

The major flaw in such arguments is that the United States is not a competitive market and never really has been. It is therefore incorrect to look at the broad performance of the largely uncompetitive American health care system and make judgments about whether a competitive health system would work well or not. . .

Read the rest, and be prepared to answer the people liberals who will say "We tried a private health care system and it didn't work." It's a long slog, but worth it.

Meanwhile, the problem with enrollments through the federal website continues:  All Iowans Who Applied For ObamaCare Asked to Reapply at State Website Due to Ongoing Glitches

The White House and its media minions want you to believe that everything is going swimmingly with ObamaCare since repairs were made to Healthcare.gov.

Quite the contrary, Iowa's KCCI TV reported Friday that the 16,000 people in that state who applied for health insurance via that website need to reapply due to a delay in paperwork.

"We are working hard to ensure that Iowans who applied through HealthCare.gov will be enrolled in health coverage. We are encouraging Iowans who applied at the federal portal to reapply through our state website and call center," said DHS Director Charles M. Palmer. "We will make every effort to process applications in a timely manner so that these Iowans can have certainty about their health care coverage."

DHS said it is sending emails and letters to the nearly 16,000 Iowans whose applications are held at the federal hub.

What, did the dog eat their homework?

A reminder of what the “broken” US healthcare system Obama is bent on destroying has done

If he said it once he said it a million times. Obama claimed the US health care system is broken.

Stepping up his push to enact legislation to reform the nation’s health-care system, President Obama today declared, “The status quo is broken,” and he warned that the current system could eventually collapse if nothing is done to control spiraling costs.

With Congress poised to debate sweeping health-care legislation in the coming weeks, Obama warned that if “we do nothing, everyone’s health care will be put in jeopardy.”

BBut American healthcare outcomes are generally as good or better than the ones that the liberals seek to emulate:

 Overall cancer:

•American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared to 56 percent for European women.
•American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent — compared to only 47 percent for European men.
•Among European countries, only Sweden has an overall survival rate for men of more than 60 percent.
•For women, only three European countries (Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland) have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.

and so on.

If it ain't broke, why are they so desperate to fix it? Because it's the quickest way to gain direct control over one sixth of the economy.