Let Freedom Ring: Obamacare Supreme Court Decision

“Let freedom ring.” Will freedom ring? Will the Federal Government succeed in controlling even more of our lives and our economy by forcing each and every one of us to buy health insurance at the risk of steep financial penalties or prison terms (yes- jail time)?[1]

We will soon find out as the Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as Obamacare. The consequences to all of us if the Supreme Court does not strike down this law are terrifying.

In a country that was founded on the premise that individuals were free and wanted minimal government intrusion, this overreach of power and control would leave our Founding Fathers horrified. After all, why should so many Americans have suffered and died for freedoms that we are seeing stripped from us by those in government?

Not only would this law, if upheld, rob us of basic freedoms (to buy or not to buy), but we would literally be robbed-from our pocket books. Our nation’s debt, thus OUR debt, is close to $16 trillion and this is prior to Obamacare being fully implemented.

Even though a recent CBS/New York Times poll shows that 68% of Americans want all or part of Obamacare repealed,[2] and the Supreme Court may be striking it down, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) still went ahead and awarded a $20 million contract to the global advertising agency Porter Novelli to promote it.[3] We need to ask why would Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary, spend our money so frivolously?

President Obama assured us, as he promoted the PPACA, that it would “only” cost $900 billion over 10 years and it would not add to our debt. However, Senator Session’s staff discovered after studying this massive bill that there is a $17 trillion funding gap with Obamacare! In other words, there is no money source to pay for it.[4]

The financial burden of this bill to businesses and ultimately to us, as regulatory costs are always passed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices, can also be found in the complexity of the law itself. People need to clearly understand laws in order to follow them, yet 6 pages of the 907 page law has produced 429 pages of regulations.[5] At this rate we will have almost 65,000 new regulations just for Obamacare alone. And you thought our tax code was confusing!

Young people, who typically have low healthcare premium rates, have started to feel the pain as well. Many universities and colleges have already announced that they will no longer provide health insurance for their students and if they do the premium costs will skyrocket by as much as 1,112%![6] [7]

Medical device manufacturers are downsizing and moving factories overseas due to the excise tax that Obamacare imposes.[8] This is especially disturbing in light of the dismal jobs report just released from The Labor Department.[9]

I shudder to think of the harmful domino effect to our freedoms and our economy if this law isn’t struck down. The power to change the course of our country partially lies in the hands of these 9 Supreme Court justices. The rest of the power lies in ours when we go to the voting booth. Presidents appoint new justices whenever a current one retires (a very near possibility considering 4 of the current Supreme Court justices are in their mid-late 70’s), and WE choose the president.

So whom will you choose this November: those who will fight to ensure our freedom to prosper and live the way our Constitution declared, or those who will continue to take us over the economic cliff with spending programs we can’t afford?

While we anxiously wait to see what our highest court chose in this monumental hearing, hold onto your hats-or should I say wallets-America, and may freedom truly ring.