Looking for a quick, easy way to get rich? Forget playing the lottery or saving and investing wisely. In 2013, the road to riches is much easier: Just get friendly with the Obama administration. Dollars will come.
That’s the lesson we can take from the President Barack Obama’s controversial health care law, the Affordable Care Act. Many of the president’s health care industry supporters and allies stand to make fortunes, the latest evidence Obamacare is a leading example of government cronyism.
Since it was passed into law in 2010, Obamacare has never been popular. A July poll by CBS News found 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the health care initiative; 39 percent want the law repealed.
So what can the Obama administration do? Launch a campaign to drown out skeptics. First up: a barrage of billboards, television and social media ads aimed at hustling us into believing Obamacare is the cure to all our ills.
Another front in that campaign is led by Enroll America, a non-profit organization established by Obama supporters in 2010 to sign up the uninsured. The mission statement from its website includes “making a coordinated, concerted and wide-reaching effort to ensure that Americans know how and where to sign up for coverage.”
As Politico has reported, Enroll America is working with the president’s campaign team, Organizing for America, to “unleash the same grass-roots mobilization and sophisticated micro-targeting tactics seen in the 2012 campaign.” Any chance they chose Georgia as one of 10 target states based on an upcoming governor and U.S. Senate election? Or the fact that Gov. Nathan Deal refused to set up an insurance exchange to implement Obamacare?
What a bonanza for insurance giants, pharmaceutical companies and other health industry players who will benefit from what is essentially free advertising for their products from this “non-profit,” coupled with a mandate that you have to buy those products.
It all paints a devastatingly ugly picture of the truth behind Obamacare: an unholy alliance of government agencies and corporate heavy-hitters working together to foist on the American people a government takeover of the U.S. health care system. And while they’re at it, they’ll be enjoying a big payday, which of course will provide more money to make campaign donations.
The broad distaste for the president’s signature law stems from a variety of factors, including the law’s numerous mandates and regulations that create a complicated maze to navigate, and the fact that it will cost much more than advertised — an estimated $1.8 trillion in the first decade alone. Then there’s the realization that many Americans expect to see the quality and access of their health care deteriorate.
The good news is that Georgians so far see past the pretty face of misleading statements. Opponents of Obamacare will continue to tell the truth about how it will make health care in the United States worse, at greater expense, while lining the pockets of corporate special interests.
Virginia Galloway is state director of Americans for Prosperity Georgia.
