The Long Slippery Slide

I'm sitting here in the beautiful sunshine of Arizona, watching my tangelo tree ripen with succulent, sweet tangelos and it hit me. There are several reasons that our beloved president shouldn't be sleeping well at night. Of course, the number one reason is his health care initiative.

Next November is a long way off, and we all remember George H.W. Bush having a 94% approval rating after the first Gulf War only 18 months before an election. It was such an astounding number that no Democrat wanted to run for the nomination, just to get trounced. It was what allowed some no-name governor from Arkansas to step up to the plate and hit the proverbial political home run. But, having said that, I have this gut feel that Obamacare is going to sink the president's agenda, and his legacy in the next 11 months.

Hispanics, which flocked to him in 2012 and were one of the main reasons he won re-election when all indications would have thought otherwise, have deserted Bobo over health care. He had a 72% approval rating with them last year at this time. Today, it's down to 52% and falling fast. The reason? His insistence that Obamacare is going to be good for them. You don't have to speak English to understand how bad the law is. Mucho caca is good enough. Secondly, he promised that immigration reform was his top agenda item in his second term. Well, we're a year into it and the only time Obama mentions immigration reform is when he doesn't want you thinking Obamacare (which has been a lot lately).

Let me ask one more stupid question. If, as the president says, Obamacare is the law of the land, and upheld by an election and the Supreme Court, and what we're seeing are only "glitches" that will be fixed, why hasn't HE signed up for it? Lots of Representatives and Senators and their staffs from both parties have signed on, even those that voted against it. So, why hasn't the grand architect of health care signed up for his own plan? Answer: He knows the trainwreck that it is, and will become. He doesn't want to put HIS family on the plan....just yours. And that speaks to character, not leadership.

The slippery slide has already started. The December 23rd deadline is less than a week away. The administration has moved the goal posts and "suggested" that the insurance companies take your applications to start on January 1st all the way up until midnight December 31st. Anyone that has ever done anything in business (other than obviously organize community groups), knows this isn't possible. They've asked insurance companies to grant insurance to people that haven't paid yet, or haven't paid in full. They've asked hospitals and doctors offices to accept patients, even though they can't show any proof of insurance yet. And what's their response? More and more of them are dropping insurance acceptance altogether and going to all cash. You see the doctor, he or she charges you $85 for the office call, and you write the check for $85 before you leave the office. These aren't stupid people...and they have found their "workaround". Let me go into that further.

I used to work for the largest radio company in the country. It was bought out by a couple of venture capitalist firms who overpaid for it. Now, radio broadcasting is a very specialized industry. If you haven't grown up in it, or worked in it for a good long while, you have no business being in it. It's that different of an animal. Our "new" corporate owners didn't know squat about radio. They would send down from Mount Olympus their edicts on how things should be done, and we would have to figure out how to do it. We called these solutions "workarounds". It was our way of getting around idiots at corporate who didn't have a clue what they were doing. We were just trying to do our work and make it successful, and when we were successful in spite of our corporate leaders, we felt great that we had designed another "corporate workaround". They were so stupid, they never caught on. I left the company 2 1/2 years ago, and I don't think they still have caught on....though a lot of good people have left their company since I have.

Anyway, I tell that story because we are all going to have to learn "workarounds" with this health care law until it collapses. And it will. But, just like doctors and hospitals who start refusing all insurance, so they can run their business like they want without government interference, we're going to have to figure workarounds to this mess. Another step in the slippery slide.

And then there is the religious implications that we'll learn about in another six months or so.  Hobby Lobby has sued Kathleen Sebelius over a violation of their first amendment rights of freedom of religion as it pertains to birth control and abortion. If you unwind this part of the onion, other parts will surely follow. And the way the law was written, take off on arm and the whole thing starts to unravel. Because you take away the contreception, and then someone can sue on the maternity coverage. Take that away, and the mamograms are next. It's a house of cards that was thrown together without much thought.

It's going to be a fun few months. The only thing that's not going to be fun is that we are the ones that are going to have to pay for Bobo Obama's mistake. Legacy? Yup....it should be his legacy!