Obamacare Defenders Accidentally Speak Truth

By now, most Scragged readers are no doubt aware of Virginia Judge Hudson's ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional.  As much as a stretch as it is to think that your visit to a doctor is part of interstate commerce, the Judge considered it far more of a stretch to claim that one person's decision not to buy health insurance fell into the authority of Congress to regulate.

Naturally, the massed forces of the Left feel otherwise, as Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hastened to tell the world in an article published in the Washington Post.

To our surprise, they didn't put forward a legal argument, or even a rational one, as to why Obamacare was in fact constitutional.  Instead, they made an emotional plea with the story of a dying preschool teacher who, they claim, would be helped by their government takeover if only we nasty conservatives would get out of the way.

It's obvious that this article was whipped up overnight because if they'd taken a minute to read what they wrote, they'd realize that their own story is the perfect illustration of why Obamacare is not merely unconstitutional, but morally wrong and logically absurd as well.

Let's see why, in their own words.

In March, New Hampshire preschool teacher Gail O'Brien, who was unable to obtain health insurance through her employer, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. Her subsequent applications for health insurance were rejected because of her condition. With each round of chemotherapy costing $16,000, she delayed treatment because she knew her savings wouldn't last.

Then President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. Thanks to this law, O'Brien is getting treatment through a temporary program that provides affordable coverage to people who've been shut out of the insurance market because of a preexisting condition. Even better, she knows that in 2014 insurers will be banned from discriminating against her or any American with preexisting conditions.

The article goes on to say that we have to force people to buy health insurance no matter what because we treat them no matter what, and thus the insured are paying the price for the free-riders.  How is this different from welfare, in which working people pay others to sit at home?  The Democratic Party has no problem with that sort of free-riding.

Set that aside.  In the very first paragraph, Sebelius and Holder make an astonishing statement:

With each round of chemotherapy costing $16,000, she delayed treatment because she knew her savings wouldn't last.

Follow the logical conclusions here.  Gail O'Brien wasn't denied treatment nor any lack of access; obviously she was seeing her doctors or she wouldn't know she had lymphoma in the first place.

What's more, she wasn't even denied for inability to pay.  She had the money - or at least some portion of it; the article mentions her "savings."

She declined to have the treatment because she did not want to pay for it!  Rather, she wants to rope someone else into paying it for her, and Obamacare is just the ticket.

What sort of idiot will choose to die rather than run down their savings?  That's insane - even if she were utterly bankrupted by the treatments and left standing on the street, cured, in her underwear, she'd have the rest of her life to earn more money.  Assuming these cabinet secretaries are telling the truth, Ms. O'Brien responded to the question "Your money or your life!" with the wrong answer.

It's possible that Ms. O'Brien is, in fact, just such a fool.  It's also possible that the lymphoma wasn't quite so severe as the article suggests and that Ms. O'Brien made an informed and rational decision.  Don't you and I delay spending of one form or another all the time, based on our own perceived needs and priorities?

Look at the question another way: Why is it worthwhile for you and me to have to pay for Ms. O'Brien's treatment, when it wasn't worthwhile for her to spend her own money for it?

The architects of Obamacare want to spend your tax dollars on treatments that people aren't willing to pay for themselves even if they can!

We've long known that our liberal elites think they know how better to spend your money than you do.

Now, thanks to this revealing article by two Cabinet secretaries, we see an even harsher truth: They truly believe that they can decide on everybody's medical treatment more wisely than you can.

With this revelation, the "death panels" don't seem quite such a stretch, do they?