Obamacare is being clobbered in the polls, which is interesting because it’ll be a few months yet before Obamacare is fully in force. It shouldn’t come as a surprise though, because conservatives have poured a lot of money into a smear campaign to persuade people they don’t like it.
If Obamacare fails, it will be because conservatives of both parties controlled the process to design the plan — and progressives let them get away with it. The end result was a plan doomed to self-destruct before it even got off the ground — and the instruments of that destruction were employers and private insurers.
Employers are not known for willingly doing right by their employees, so in general they will pay as little as they can get away with and offer as few benefits as possible. It’s a common practice for many companies to schedule workers less than 40 hours a week just so they won’t be considered full-time — and as a rule part-time employees are not eligible for such perks as paid vacations and insurance. If Obamacare mandates that employees working 30 or more hours a week would be eligible for insurance, it’s a simple thing for employers to limit their workers to 29. Now who didn’t see this coming?
Employer-based insurance is stupid to begin with, so employers would have rejoiced if they didn’t have to be involved at all. Private insurers, on the other hand, hated the idea of being left out. After all, these companies exist for one reason only — to make money. Helping people cuts into profits, so they will avoid helping whenever possible, as long as the law allows.
It would be delusional to think that those governing the United States would see the light and decide to craft a universal single-payer insurance system anytime soon, but a public option would have begun to pave the way. But when a public option was left out of the discussion about an Affordable Care Act, the message was clear: don’t get your hopes up about reform.
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