Thanksgiving 2013: ObamaCare Talking Point Survival Guide

Friends, I know, it's Thanksgiving, and the last thing you want to hear from your tongue-pierced Anthropology major nephew is how unbelievably fantabulous ObamaCare is. Grandma's stuffing is out of this world, to be cherished -- no, worshipped; yet the White House, via Organizing For Action, is encouraging the Zombie Faithful to shanghai dinner. 

So we must respond.  How?  Well, first, you might seize Billy's plate, and every time he mounts the Obama Flag, take something off it -- redistribute! -- so that by the time he's done, the plate is empty, vacuous -- like his head.

Play on instinct -- whatever seems right.  But, of course, you may engage him intellectually.... *cough* .... and if you choose this path you are not only brave, you're in the right place!  Keep reading.  Below lies the distribution of knowledge and, with hope of redistribution, the refutation of Billy:

OFA Talking Point #1: Healthcare.gov has had difficulties but the state exchanges are working well.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Like Oregon?  They spent $45 million, give or take a million - who's counting? -- and signed up the same number of people clamoring to see Michelle on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a thong.  The states are signing up Medicaid enrollees, at a 4:1 ratio, a fiscal time-bomb that will ravage their budgets and lead to LESS care for those supposedly "covered."

OFA Talking Point #2: The website's problem is demand and once the front-end problems are fixed, it will work.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Healthcare.gov project manager, Henry Chao, told Congress last week that 40% of the website isn't even built -- there's NO payment system set up.  Are you majoring in Comedy?

OFA Talking Point #3: Only a few young and healthy people will pay more -- for most people, they will keep their plans, or have something better.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Costs are going through the roof in 41 states, and the other nine are treading water.  Five-million people have already lost their plans, with tens of millions - and next year as many as 100 million -- to lose their plan and their doctor, when both group and individual markets are forced into compliance with ObamaCare mandates.

OFA Talking Point #4: The pre-ObamaCare health insurance market was a "free market" full of junk plans, which screwed people over and dropped their insurance when they got sick.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Who feeds you this garbage?  Prior to ObamaCare, 87% of Americans reported a high level of satisfaction with their insurance, and, indeed, 85% had insurance.  These plans were not, by law, able to drop coverage for "sick" people -- and by the way, did you know that Medicare denies more coverage -- by a greater than 2:1 ratio -- than private insurers?

OFA Talking Point #5: ObamaCare is already controlling health care costs, and it will eventually lower premium costs.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Per/capita health care spending is down across the globe due to economic stagnation borne of government policies.  Obama's clown act has stifled growth, led to unemployment levels not seen since the Depression, and clobbered the private sector.  The Unicorn Prince's promise that "our plan will lower premiums by an average of $2500 per/family" turned out to be an Orwellian lie so colossal that he had to recruit an Army of Drones to continue to spread it, over the holidays, like manure. 

OFA Talking Point #6: Once you're able to get onto the website, you'll have plenty of cheaper/better choices and be able to qualify for a subsidy.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Even for those who "qualify" for the "right" to use someone else's money to pay for what they won't, premiums aren't affordable.  Premiums are rising because ObamaCare forces insurers to offer "free" this and "free" that, with no regard for what consumers need or want.  ObamaCare decreases choice and competition, adds layers of burdensome regulation, and does nothing to address the problem of 3rd party payment that inexorably hides, and therefore inflates, costs....  Will you pass the stuffing? 

OFA Talking Point #7: When people get covered under ObamaCare, they'll start liking the new system because they'll get the same health care, but cheaper.

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA....  Are you joking?  The majority of people enrolling in "ObamaCare" are, in reality, signing up for Medicaid, which doctors and hospitals are refusing to accept.  No, Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus, and no, "if you like your doctor, you will not be able to keep your doctor."  Insurers, in order to remain solvent, are narrowing physician/hospital networks, meaning that you will not only lose your doctor, but your choice of where you can seek effective treatment.  Coverage is not care.  Under ObamaCare, medical quality will go down, wait times will go up, and as more and more procedures are denied by government, wholesale misery will be the new "Hope and Change."

OFA Talking Point #8: The ObamaCare Medicaid expansion, which only conservatives oppose, is giving millions of people access to affordable health care.

Rebuttal: DUDE -- is there stuffing in your ears?  People on Medicaid do not have ready access to health care and, indeed, are better off not having insurance at all.  How is adding millions of people to an overburdened and debt-laden system that underpays providers going to improve medical delivery?  All Medicaid expansion does is explode budgets, leading to greater debt and an even worse economy.

OFA Talking Point #9: This whole thing would have worked just fine except for the Republican commitment to kill it.

Rebuttal: Wow -- I think Castro said the same thing about Cuba....  Or was it Sean Penn?  Doesn't matter -- the fact is, Republicans have done nothing -- repeat, nothing -- substantive to stop ObamaCare, either legislatively or fiscally.  It's been funded, regulations have gone out, and the Sebelius-Obama Star Wars cast have had three -- now four -- years to make it happen -- they cannot.  It's not workable.  And they don't want it to work -- the entire law was written to implode, so Captain Barry could swoop in for the rescue, spew more lies, and give us single-payer.  But, please, continue -- you're entertaining.

OFA Talking Point #10: We're just trying to help poor people get health care! How can that be wrong?  Why do you hate poor people?

Rebuttal: HA-HA-HA.... Did you know that the nine scariest words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help"?  Tell me, how does a coercive, top-down, massively inefficient government monopoly do anything but play on people's emotions in order to gain support?  Did you know that poverty today is actually higher than in the 60s when we began a "war" on it?  Government does not help people become productive citizens, it helps them to grow government-- that is the goal, not to lower costs, not to provide better health care; the goal is to expand federal power and control over 18% of the economy, to redistribute wealth, and to create dependency on the Ruling Class that runs the Goody Train in Washington D.C.  Poor people have health care in this country, what they don't have is a thriving job market in a vibrant economy capable of creating a boom for all Americans.  Again, "coverage is not care," and when back in the day, Winston Churchill said, "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, and the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery," he was right.  ObamaCare will increase poverty in America - but, do go on about who "hates" the poor.

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Friends, happy Thanksgiving....  God bless you and your family -- morons included -- and here's to hoping that you won't need this article.  But prepare for the Turkey, just in case.

Greg Halvorson is on Facebook at The Conservative Hammer.

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