The Patriot Post® · Reid Throws Down the Gauntlet

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “There’s plenty of horror stories being told [about ObamaCare] – all of them are untrue,” most questioned his understanding of reality. After all, it’s regularly reported that businesses have cut hours, premiums have increased, and millions of Americans couldn’t keep plans they liked. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put it, “Why in the world would people be calling us with these stories if they were not true?”

Moreover, many of those employees who have seen their hours cut are those who work in the public sector. Unlike the federal government, budgets there have to be balanced and something has to give. “Are we supposed to lay off full-time teachers so that we can provide insurance coverage to part-time employees?” asked one exasperated Connecticut school superintendent. State and local governments around the country have carefully cut hours to keep part-time employees from making the magic 30-hour weekly threshold where benefits have to be provided under the “Affordable” Care Act.

With the increase in premiums, it’s also become clear that even people who sign up aren’t willing to pay – up to 20% of those who signed up before Jan. 1 hadn’t paid a premium by month’s end, reported The New York Times. Of course, this assumes that folks can work through the state exchanges, which in Maryland’s case may now have to be scrapped and rebuilt after they sacked the original contractor. Maybe that’s why the vast majority of that state’s residents who signed up were placed in Medicaid instead of securing private insurance.

So we have what is charitably being called a “train wreck” in the news as the 2014 elections approach, and Democrats who face the voters this November are panicky about their prospects.

Of course, Reid is exempt from accountability because he’s not up for re-election until 2016. But someone else with an eye on the 2016 campaign is trying to straddle the fence with a position as one of mending the law but not ending it. Speaking before a group of health care professionals in Florida, Hillary Clinton noted that, “Part of the challenge is to clear away all the smoke and try to figure out what is working and what isn’t. … It would be a great tragedy, in my opinion, to take away what has now been provided.” Considering it’s an idea she tried to implement two decades ago, it’s obvious she’s not believing the horror stories either.