The American electorate is not stupid about Obamacare… at least not all of us. We listened. We paid attention to the debates. Many of us even read the bill, all 1,100 pages of it!  We knew so-called facts were being touted and spun. Lies, false dichotomies, logical fallacies, quid pro quos, backdoor deals -- you name it -- all were used as tools to pass it. If it was deceptive, underhanded, self-serving and/or illogical, it was added to the Democrats’ bag of tricks. The rallying cry was lies, lies, and more lies -- anything to pass this bill!  It was blatant. It was in-your-face. It went on and on. It was amazing to behold. The Democrats were large and in charge. They were in their own utopic bubble and nothing and no one was going to get in their way – including “We, the People”, the majority of whom have opposed the law since its passage. 

The people wanted healthcare reform. They wanted lower costs and secure coverage, including coverage for pre-existing conditions, young adult children and the unemployed. That’s it. Otherwise, we liked our healthcare.

What the people received, however, was a whole lot more than they bargained for -- a complete monstrosity of a bill, a convoluted, litigious mess that usurped a huge portion of the economy. It was filled with penalties, fees, mandates, and various taxes on both individuals and businesses. Yet, somehow, someway it was supposed to lower costs. Guess what? That didn’t happen. 

As many of us anticipated, healthcare costs have increased dramatically -- again, for individuals as well as businesses. Hillary Clinton’s musings notwithstanding, businesses do create jobs. Unfortunately, with the higher costs businesses have had to bear due to ObamaCare, they are creating fewer of those jobs, specifically fewer full-time jobs. So now some people have access to health insurance that they did not have before, but can no longer put food on the table to feed their families, by the production of their own hands and minds. Granted, health insurance is really nice to have, when you need it. But on the great totem pole of life’s priorities, putting food on the table comes first.

Just about everyone who is not subsidized has seen their expenses go up, directly or indirectly, since the passage of ObamaCare. A few were lucky enough to receive waivers or delays, some might argue arbitrarily and illegally, but those carve outs will not last forever. Some will see the financial hit in 2015. Others, 2016. Still others 2017 and beyond. By the time the full disastrous impact is felt, Mr. Obama will be long gone. And cynically, one might wonder if he planned it that way.  

So, where was the mainstream media in all of this? Oh, they were around. They just weren’t doing their job very well. Most of the time, they failed to conduct any due diligence. When they actually did, they ignored the facts (Al Gore would call them ‘inconvenient truths’). As long as what the administration was spewing fit their agenda, everything was copacetic with them. And apparently, it still is.

It would seem that for the most part, the mainstream media has no issues with the recently surfaced videotaped comments of Jonathan Gruber. Presumably, the media agree with what he said. Of course, liberals have always been the ends-justify-the-means kind of feelers. In other words, they are people you cannot trust to be honest and straightforward when they have an agenda. 

Now that the public is faced with the truth of what their government thinks of them, thanks to Gruber (who was paid approx. $400k for his stellar work), the only explanation the Democrats can offer is either 1) Gruber lied (yes, accuse the liar of lying when the lie is discovered!) or 2) everyone does it.

The ‘everyone does it’ argument is the very last refuge for the morally-challenged and sounds quite like fingernails on a chalkboard to conservatives. If the Democrats have gone there, and they have, they can no longer feign ignorance. If they defend the thinking and methods laid out by Gruber, they are complicit in the deception and equally as guilty as he is.
In the various videos of Gruber that have cropped up, he not only asserts the stupidity of American voters, but also specifically states that the subsidies were provided to entice (i.e., force) the states to set up their own exchanges. This point is at the heart of King v. Burwell, a case whereby the Supreme Court will decide if ObamaCare actually means what it says -- that subsidies can only be given to those who have purchased health insurance on state exchanges. 

The last time the Supreme Court had to decide whether or not ObamaCare meant what it said, it decided that it did. The irony was that the text was not what the government lawyers were arguing it said. If the federal government was forcing people to buy insurance and penalizing them if they did not, the Court would have declared the bill unconstitutional. But if these penalties and fees were in fact a tax, as the Supreme Court concluded, then the bill was constitutional. So in the blink of an eye, a ‘penalty’ became a ‘tax’ and voila! ObamaCare survived to live another day, supported by the taxing authority of the federal government. It was a good trick, really.

As Gruber said, the bill was tortured in an attempt not to call it a tax. Then, the Supreme Court tortured it some more to call it out as a tax. American voters still paid because a tax by any other name is still money out the door.

But you see, this is the essence of liberal big government – elitists thinking they know better than you do, that due to the very nature of their advanced brainpower and overall awesomeness, they get to tell you what to do, how to live, what to think, and who to believe. They get to pick the winners and the losers in their quest for complete control over American lives. And half of us are willing to let them because they tell us it is for our own good!  Those in the ‘something must be done’, ‘healthcare should be free’, ‘we all need insurance’, ‘it’s for our own good’ camp are permitting it!

But now, with the revelation of what the Democrats in the federal government really think about us (aka “we, the stupid American voters”), can we not see that we have misjudged them?

Now, none of this is news to conservatives. We have been sounding the alarm bells for many, many years. We have pointed out the deceptions, the logical fallacies, the quid pro quos that went into passing this monstrosity. It is not our fault if the Democrats in Congress chose not to listen and/or to ignore the realities.

The process of passing Obamacare was ugly, the players corrupt, the deals underhanded and the methods disengenuous, but the end result, to a liberal Democrat, erases all that. Like Gruber, they would ‘rather have this bill than not’. If Democrats have to give up truth, transparency, the rule of law and their very souls to get what they want, so be it. 

Hence, we found we cannot keep our plans as promised -- they no longer exist. And we cannot keep our doctors either -- those greedy capitalists actually expect to be paid for their work! The cost curve has been bent, but of course, in the opposite direction. Families are still waiting for that $2,500 annual savings they were promised -- which if adjusted for all the increases in premiums, co-pays and deductibles, the lowered cap in annual flexible spending benefits along with the limitation of qualified purchases, the fees and penalties (some of which you see, some of which you do not see, but all of which you ultimately pay) that have occurred since the passage of ObamaCare -- would now be upwards of $10,000 for many of us. 
American voters do not like being misled. Or insulted. And Democrats did both of those things. In my best Obama impression: Let me be clear when I say: “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother!”

Last week, Democrats realized just how meticulously we have been keeping score. The midterms were a huge repudiation of them, their policies, their tactics and their ways. They can hold hands all they want, band together like a political phalanx, and proclaim that the midterms were not a mandate, but the fact of the matter is this: We bought them via donations to their campaigns. We paid for them via generous salaries and benefits. We thought they would be good civil servants, but they just didn’t work as intended. Thankfully, we kept the receipt and we returned them – last week. Reason: not as advertised. 
We ought to be able to return ObamaCare for the same reason.