The ObamaCare Train Wreck

Do these people really understand what they are doing with ObamaCare? It doesn't sound like it.

Hugh Hewitt had a couple of ObamaCare supporters on his radio program on Monday. And they, Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic and Henry Aaron of Brookings, didn't have a clue.

They didn't really know where the Medicare savings were coming from. Except that Jonathan Cohn knew they were coming from productivity improvements like better infection control. Dr. Henry Aaron knew the money was coming from somewhere:

The story is that if one is going to extend coverage as the Senate plan would do to 25 to 35 million, or currently uninsured Americans, they’re going to consume some more health care services. And the money to pay for that needs to come from somewhere. Most of the money would come from projected growth in productivity of health care delivery under Medicare.

This sort of thing shows that the Democrats have lost the plot. They are just playing one group off against another. They are going to give uninsured Americans more health care services and they are going to take it away from other Americans.

But that's not what Democrats are for. They are for giving America glorious benefits and taxing the rich or evil corporations. Nobody is supposed to have to pay for all this. Especially not grandma. It is all supposed to appear magically.

You cannot suddenly turn up and say that, hey, we are going to take away benefits from you seniors to give to the uninsured Americans. Not after a century of demanding benefits for seniors. You don't do that. You don't ever take benefits away from welfare state recipients.

My view is that the current generation of Democrats are like the inheritors of an imperial dynasty. Two generations back there were rough tough Democrats that came out of the hills and conquered the United States for themselves and their supporters.

But now the Democrats are soft and civilized. They are used to the easy life in their inherited Senate seats and their fluffy think tank berths and their leisured academic tenure. They think that grants grow on trees. And they don't know how to appeal to the great mass of Americans.

Actually, they don't like the great mass of Americans.

More and more, it is looking like a Perfect Storm coming up for our Democratic friends. They played their tactical game beautifully in 2006 and 2008. They blamed everything on Bush and the Republicans, and they sold the American people on the idea that they were post-partisan moderates.

Now they want to govern like McGovern and the American people are upchucking.

And the upchucking has only just begun.