According to leading polls of Democratic primary voters, health care is still one the top issues. And it took center stage, as a new human right, by means of the new progressive socialist tag-team, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, during Tuesday's Democratic debate.
On night 2, there was not the unbridled enthusiasm for the Sanders-Warren Medicare for All scheme, as Joe Biden threw cold water on it and defended Obamacare. But he appears to be one of only a few. To many of the rest, it's like Obamacare never existed – like it had no positive effect on "health care" at all.
It didn't, by the way.
And here we are today. It's déjà -vu all over again (h/t: Yogi Berra). Almost a decade after Obamacare was signed into law, the issue is still front and center.
And why is that? Wasn't passing Obamacare supposed to alleviate all our health-care concerns? Isn't that how it was billed?
Of course it was. It was going to solve all the problems created by the evil private sector. Yet here they are complaining of the same issues.
Now many of the Dems running for president have leap-frogged Obamacare and signed on to single-payer government-run health care, or Medicare for All.
It's a tacit, yet unspoken, admission that Obamacare is a failed experiment. For those of us who have followed this saga, we knew this day would come. We just didn't know when.
During the Tuesday debate, Bernie Sanders exclaimed, "Right now, we have a dysfunctional health-care system – 87 million uninsured or underinsured, 500,000 Americans every year going bankrupt because of medical bills, 30,000 people dying. …"
Now where have we heard this before? That's right. The same was said about private health insurance when they were pushing for Obamacare.
But this was the plan all along. Obamacare was set up to fail. And when it did, the hope of the Democrats was that the public would seek them out to "fix" it – never giving a thought that Washington is why health care is broken in the first place.
And it's not as if we weren't warned about their intentions. Sixteen years ago, in 2003, a then relative nobody, Barack Obama, said: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health-care program … a single-payer health-care plan, a universal health-care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately."
By sheer coincidence, that same year, 2003, was the first time a Medicare for All bill was introduced in the House, by John Conyers. Even back then, it received 25 co-sponsors.
Obama knew back then that one cannot dive head first into the socialist deep end of one-size-fits-all government health care. He knew the people would first have to dip their toes in the water, by offering a "public option," as Obamacare was advertised.
And this is where the psychology of it lies. The Democrats understand, apparently better than do the Republicans, that the public must be trained to become more and more dependent upon government to solve all our problems and make things right. So when things go bad, whether it's health care, housing, the stock market, or a natural disaster – the public's first inclination must be to run to Daddy-government to make it right.
The Dems understood, even as Obamacare was passed, that it was nothing but a Trojan horse. It was never meant to succeed. It was just another way to further the public's dependency on government.
And once people began to try to use the plans they were offered, they found that they couldn't afford to use them, because of premiums and deductibles.
They found out that Obamacare isn't health care, the way it was billed.
Now, years later, with increasingly few exceptions, the Dems have picked up the mantle from Bernie Sanders and have decided that now is the time to abandon Obamacare and jump on the Medicare for All, single-payer bandwagon.
So at the end of day, one has to ask: What's next? They've trashed private health insurance to opt for Obamacare. Now they're abandoning Obamacare to opt for Medicare for All. And when that fails, as it will, I shudder to think what could possibly be next. I mean, what could possibly be worse than single-payer government health care?
Well, I don't know, but if there is anything worse than Medicare for All, rest assured, the Democrats will find it.