The Patriot Post® · 2016 Not Looking Good for ObamaCare

There’s a high probability that Barack Obama will boast of the success of his signature health care legislation at tonight’s State of the Union Address. It was one of the policies he highlighted in his first weekly address of 2016, saying his administration has covered 17 million people. But Obama is throwing out an eight-digit number, saying it with a smile, and selling a statistic that actually shows ObamaCare isn’t performing like promised. As Investor’s Business Daily notes, 11.3 million people enrolled through an ObamaCare exchange in 2015. But many of those people were switching plans, through voluntary effort or government coercion. Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that ObamaCare needed to enroll 20 million Americans for it to become solvent. Obama’s rosy 17 million doesn’t look good now, especially in the face of crumbling co-ops and fewer Millennials signing up than expected. This lack of participation comes as 49 states expect insurance premium hikes this year. While Mississippi is the only state expected to see a (slight) drop in the price of health insurance, 29 states will see double-digit percentage increases (like the 25% increase The Patriot Post faced in 2015). Minnesota will get hit the hardest, with an expected 47.7% increase. But all this insolubility only underlines the biggest issue with ObamaCare: It’s still unconstitutional for the government to tell Americans to get insurance and dictate what kind of insurance they can receive, two legislate-from-the-bench Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding.