I have great sympathy for almost all segments of the population that have been disadvantaged by Obamacare.
Among the victims are many relatively powerless people, including children, low-income workers, and retirees.
It’s equally tragic that millions of families – notwithstanding the President’s oft-repeated promise – already have lost their insurance plans, and it’s a crisis that this number could swell to more than 50 million over the next year.
And taxpayers, needless to say, are going to incur heavy burdens because of the President’s reckless new entitlement.
Heck, compared to all these groups, the unfortunate people who merely had to endure the “third world experience” of the Obamacare website should consider themselves lucky.
Yet even though I am brimming with empathy for the victims of Obamacare, there is one group that is suffering and I can say without hesitation or reservation that the people affected don’t tug on my heart strings or engender feelings of sympathy.
I’m referring to the staffers on Capitol Hill. According to a Politico story, some of these folks are having to pay more thanks to the President’s scheme to expand government’s control over the healthcare system. Here are the key excerpts.
Veteran House Democratic aides are sick over the insurance prices they’ll pay under Obamacare, and they’re scrambling to find a cure. “In a shock to the system, the older staff in my office (folks over 59) have now found out their personal health insurance costs (even with the government contribution) have gone up 3-4 times what they were paying before,” Minh Ta, chief of staff to Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), wrote to fellow Democratic chiefs of staff… In the email, Ta noted that older congressional staffs may leave their jobs because of the change to their health insurance.
Oh no, they might leave? Perish the thought! Surely they have more money to waste, more regulations to impose, and higher taxes to approve.
You may detect a slight tone of sarcasm in my remarks, but that’s for a good reason. First of all, many of these staffers are only in an unpleasant situation because their bosses voted for Obamacare. If they want to complain, perhaps they should schedule a meeting with the power-hungry politicians that caused the mess in the first place.
Second, I have a hard time feeling much empathy for these people when the Obama Administration already has arbitrarily and illegally altered the law so that taxpayers will cover 75 percent of their health insurance expenditures. I realize there’s an entitlement mentality in Washington, but you would think these people would have some sense of shame!
Let’s finish by enjoying some new cartoons. Here’s one from Gary Varvel on the economic burden of Obamacare, which appeals to me for obvious reasons.
By the way, if you like the Aflac duck and the GEICO gecko, here’s another Varvel cartoon you’ll appreciate.
Now we have a Bob Gorrell cartoon that starkly exposes the President’s illegal changes to Obamacare.
In other words, this bit of satire turned out to be reality.
Nate Beeler has a very good cartoon that captures Obama’s disdain for the suffering of ordinary people.
It fits in well with the Ramirez cartoon in this post.
Then we have Jerry Holbert showing a way to really punish Iran.
Sort of like what Rand Paul said (quoting me!) about Syria.
Last but not least, here’s another Varvel cartoon that sums up what Obama staffers are trying to do.
Surprisingly, this is only the second time I can recall sharing a cartoon featuring Humpty Dumpty.
But don’t laugh too hard at these cartoons. Obama may get the last laugh if he can survive the short-run political damage and create more long-run government dependency.
P.S. Actually, the title of this post is wrong. There is a group of people in America who don’t like Obamacare and – believe it or not – they are even less deserving of sympathy than the army of staffers on Capitol Hill.
P.P.S. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that politicians don’t deal with this issue by re-hiring the taxpayer-financed “grief counselors” who were used to console Democratic staffers after the 2010 elections.
P.P.P.S. Here’s a very funny parody video about the Obamacare disaster.
[…] it would have been a shame if the people who have screwed up public policy had to get jobs in the private sector (or, more likely, the parasitic lobbying […]
[…] politicians and staffers of Capitol Hill, for instance, are very upset about the prospect of being subjected to the law that they inflicted on the rest of the country. Gee, my heart breaks for […]
[…] workers, and retirees, as well as those that don’t deserve much sympathy, such ascongressional staff, IRS bureaucrats, and Harvard […]
[…] workers, and retirees, as well as those that don’t deserve much sympathy, such as congressional staff, IRS bureaucrats, and Harvard […]
[…] goal, of course, isn’t to deny the folks on Capitol Hill from getting pre-Obamacare subsidies for their health […]
[…] kids are being disadvantaged by Obamacare as well (on the other hand, it is somewhat amusing that politicians, IRS agents, and Harvard professors are upset about the […]
[…] politicians and staffers of Capitol Hill are very upset about the prospect of being subjected to the law that they inflicted on the rest of the […]
[…] politicians and staffers of Capitol Hill are very upset about the prospect of being subjected to the law that they inflicted on the rest of the […]
perhaps santa will bring us a gift… when democrats talk with their constituents over the holidays… they might well undergo an attitude adjustment with regard to obamacare… particularly democrats in contested districts and senators facing reelection next year… when they return to Washington perhaps they will have reflected on the wisdom of stanchly supporting unpopular and immensely destructive legislation…
that said… Hillary will be looking for an issue/issues on which she can appear compassionate and knowledgeable… if obamacare burns… it will rise anew… a phoenix from the ashes… next presidential election it will be……… Hillary care… after all… she has a lot of experience in failed health care reform… and… and… what else? Benghazi? if she is elected president… and we slide farther into the abyss… at least bill with provide entertainment… imagine first husband Clinton interviewing interns for the white house staff… now there’s a reality show to watch…………………
Not enough can be said about what a great equalizer ObamaCare will shape out to be. Now, finally, both the rich, as well as an increasing swath of the middle and lower class, face marginal tax rates of 50-60%.
But heck, mediocrity has just become a little more comfortable, so who cares about all that…
Humbled by the level of solidarity and generosity, now approaching European levels, I will spring out of bed tomorrow morning, with increased enthusiasm; to go and defend with indomitable passion my American middle lass prosperity standing in the world’s top 10%. Finally! Socialism that works!
Lower incentives AND higher growth. We crack the perpetual motion machine of prosperity. Yes, we can!
Obama gains little from creating government dependency that will outlast his presidency, though perhaps his party may gain something.
But what Obama gives me, the forgotten Average American (in the top 10% of world prosperity) is the an opportunity to the dream that someone else, someone more intelligent, more competent, or perhaps just harder working, will cut short his yoga practice after breakfast to leave his family every morning, drive by the golf course, forget his cottage by the lake, ignore his French friends sailing in the Carribean, and go close himself in an office, to work half of his day to eventually pay for my ObamaCare, so that I can use the money I would have spent on healthcare to buy a VW Jetta for my daughter going to college, instead of the old beat up Civic, or remodel that bathroom my family has been complaining about. AND, most importantly, both I and my more competent brethren, we will both retain enough working enthusiasm to enable the American economy to keep outcompeting the rest of the world, so that my Obamacare remains the best medical care in the world, and I retain my average American prosperity position in the top 10% worldwide.
Europeans keep having shots at this dream, but they somehow always get it wrong. There ARE ways to neutralize the flattening of the effort-reward curves that come from coercive redistribution. But Europeans do not have smart economists like Paul Krugman to implement these mechanisms to keep effort-rewards flatter AND production motivation higher at the same time. That is why Europeans are all stuck on 1-2% annual growth trendlines to decline. But Americans will get it right. There is something special, something supernatural, something almost magical and preordained about America. Americans are destined to remain the most prosperous people on earth.
Come join us! Let’s strengthen our majority! If enough people dream the dream, the others will follow. What choice do they have anyway?