Almost every Republican and even a few Democrats believe that the implementation of Obamacare is going to be a train wreck. While the government imposed health care disaster will almost certainly have negative impacts on the economy and slow, and possibly even reverse, the already tepid recovery, it will be entirely owned by President Obama and the Democrats. So instead of standing in the tracks and trying to stop the onrushing train, Republicans should get out the way and allow the crash to take place. Daniel Henninger makes to case for Letting ObamaCare Collapse:
The odds of ObamaCare's eventual self-collapse look stronger every day. After that happens, then what? Try truly universal health insurance? Not bloody likely if the aghast U.S. public has any say.
Enacted with zero Republican votes, ObamaCare is the solely owned creation of the Democrats' belief in their own limitless powers to fashion goodness out of legislated entitlements. Sometimes social experiments go wrong. In the end, the only one who supported Frankenstein was Dr. Frankenstein. The Democrats in 2014 should by all means be asked relentlessly to defend their monster.
Republicans and conservatives, instead of tilting at the defunding windmill, should be working now to present the American people with the policy ideas that will emerge inevitably when ObamaCare's declines. The system of private insurance exchanges being adopted by the likes of Walgreens suggests a parallel alternative to ObamaCare may be happening already.
If Republicans feel they must "do something" now, they could get behind Sen. David Vitter's measure to force Congress to enter the burning ObamaCare castle along with the rest of the American people. Come 2017, they can repeal the ruins.
The discrediting of the entitlement state begins next Tuesday. Let it happen.
As Henninger notes, there is a risk in this “let it happen” strategy. Proponents of Obamacare (like those who claim that “real” socialism has never been tried or those that say the stimulus wasn’t big enough) will argue that the reason it failed wasn’t because of its inherently flawed premise, but rather that it didn’t go far enough. They will push instead for the single payer, universal health care model. And there is a possibility that’s what we could end up with. However, like Heninger, I believe that once Americans experience the bad taste of Obamacare the last thing they’ll want is an even bigger dose of the same medicine.
