The Patriot Post® · ObamaCare's Failure Is Trump's Fault?

In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday, Jonathan Gruber, one of the primary architects of ObamaCare, was questioned as to who was at fault for the law’s failure. Gruber responded, “Before President Trump was elected there were no counties in America that did not have an insurer. … Then you have a president who comes in, undercuts open enrollment, doesn’t honor the obligations this law makes to insurers and as a result premiums are going up and insurers are exiting.” In other words, ObamaCare is failing because of Donald Trump. What a conveniently deceitful excuse. The reality is that insurance companies have been swallowing losses for years, prompting many to leave the government exchanges well before Trump even became a candidate for president. And while Trump has talked about cutting funding to ObamaCare, to date none of those threats have been enacted. Once again, Gruber is simply peddling a lie.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was given the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award over the weekend. In his speech he touted his and Democrat brave efforts in forcing ObamaCare onto the American public, all the while ignoring the skyrocketing costs and general wreckage to Americans’ freedom his law created. He declared, “These [Democrat] men and women did the right thing. They did the hard thing … and most of them did lose their seats.” Yes, many Democrats did lose their seats, but Republicans are proving that their “sacrifice” was worth it by their own unwillingness to potentially suffer a similar fate in repealing the disastrous law for the good of the country.

Finally, while Trump is not to blame for ObamaCare’s imminent collapse, he has hampered Republicans’ efforts at repealing and replacing the law. The fact of the matter is that Trump likes too many things about ObamaCare. His demand that the replacement law retain some of the more costly elements of the “Affordable” Care Act has only proven to deepen divisions within the Republican Party, weakening their ability to comprehensively repeal and replace. We’re discovering he and many moderates simply don’t want true repeal. Just this past weekend Trump tweeted, “Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do — everybody does. ObamaCare is Dead! But our healthcare will soon be great.” It’s strange to offer praise of a single-payer system, which is what Republicans are trying to avoid.

So, while Democrats continue to spin the fiction of the “successes” of ObamaCare, Trump and Republicans are saddled with a disunified effort to fix the mess they were given.