Obama Care is a disaster

“Unemployment insurance or subsidized coverage run by the government is destined to fail. It encourages laziness, has no accountability, and wins the voters' vote who is receiving it. […] If you don't work and don't plan on working, you shouldn't be allowed to have it.” Keep in mind unemployment insurance only goes to folks who are actively looking for work, a mom who needs help feeding her kids when she sends out her resumes or a dad who needs help paying the rent while working part-time and still earning the skills he needs for that new job. “Subsidies cause an extra burden on those who have earned their health care. A lot of young and healthy people were counted on it enter the exchanges, but they can't afford it. This causes the system to collapse, because those who are paying for it don't want to get it anymore.” First, there is the myth that this is a problem restricted to a small share of predominantly minority poor. This isn’t a broad-based problem; this is a black problem or Hispanic problem or a Native American problem. Now, it’s true that the painful legacy of discrimination means that African-Americans, Latinos, Native Americans are far more likely to suffer from a lack of opportunity -- higher unemployment, higher poverty rates. It’s also true that women still make 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. So we’re going to need strong application of anti-discrimination laws. We’re going to need immigration reform that grows the economy and takes people out of the shadows. We’re going to need targeted initiatives to close those gaps. “The free market isn't 100% fair, but not everyone is equal.” This trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America’s market economy; across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. America is a place where, even if you’re born with nothing, with a little hard work, you can improve your own situation over time and build something better to leave your kids. “When time passes for the working poor Americans, their income increases in mobility in larger steps than the wealthier born Americans. This is in spite of the more affluent Americans growing faster than the less fortunate.” Some of the social patterns that contribute to declining mobility, that were once attributed to the urban poor -- you know, that’s a particular problem for the inner city, you know, single-parent households or drug abuse -- it turns out now we’re seeing that pop up everywhere. A new study shows that disparities in education, mental health, obesity, absent fathers, isolation from church, isolation from community groups -- these gaps are now as much about growing up rich or poor as they are about anything else. The gap in test scores between poor kids and wealthy kids is now nearly twice what it is between white kids and black kids. Kids with working-class parents are 10 times likelier than kids with middle- or upper-class parents to go through a time when their parents have no income. So the fact is this: The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race. And that gap is growing. So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is an issue exclusively of minority concern. And we have to reject a politics that suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of handouts. “People give more when they are not taxed. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis proved this.” Our tax code is fairer and our fiscal situation is firmer, with deficits that are now less than half of what they were. “The 1.1 Million people that have health care coverage according to the White House recently.This is lower than the 3.3 Million that Obama Administration projected.” The basic structure of that law is working, despite all the problems. Despite the website problems, despite the messaging problems, despite all that, it's working. And again, you don't have to take my word for it. We've got a couple million people who are going to have health insurance just in the first three months, despite the fact that probably the first month and a half was lost because of problems with the website and about as bad a bunch of publicity as you could imagine. And yet, you've still got 2 million people who signed up -- or more. And so, what that means, then, is that the demand is there, and as I said before, the product is good. Now, in putting something like this together, there are going to be all kinds of problems that crop up, some of which may have been unanticipated. And what we've been trying to do is just respond to them in a common-sense way, and we're going to continue to try to do that. But that doesn't negate the fact that, you know, a year from now or two years from now, when we look back, we're going to be able to say that even more people have health insurance who didn't have it before. And that's not a bad thing; that's a good thing. That is part of the reason why I pushed so hard to get this law done in the first place. And -- you know, I've said before that this is a messy process. And I think, sometimes, when I say that, people say, well, A, yeah, it's real messy, and B, you know, isn't -- isn't the fact that it's been so messy some indication that there are more fundamental problems with the law? And I guess what I'd say to that, Chuck, is, when you try to do something this big affecting this many people, it's going to be hard. And every instance -- whether it's Social Security, Medicare, the prescription drug plan under President Bush -- there hasn't been an instance where you've tried to really have an impact on the American peoples' lives and well-being, particularly in the health care arena where you don't end up having some of these challenges. The question is going to be, ultimately, do we make good decisions trying to help as many people as possible in as efficient a way as possible? And I think that's what we're doing. I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It should not be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose. What’s guided us from the start of this crisis hasn’t been the search for a silver bullet. It’s been a commitment to stay at it -- to be persistent -- to keep trying every new idea that works, and listen to every good proposal, no matter which party comes up with it. Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we will have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. “Health care maybe increasing at a slower rate than ever, but that's still a big price you have to pay. The creation of Medicare and Medicaid, not paying the doctor directly, longer life span, and government subsidies is the likely source of the problem.” Without Social Security nearly half of seniors would be living in poverty -- half. Today fewer than 1 in 10 do. Before Medicare, only half of all seniors had some form of health insurance. Today virtually all do. And because we’ve strengthened that safety net and expanded pro-work and pro- family tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a recent study found that the poverty rate has fallen by 40 percent since the 1960s. What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do? These endeavors didn’t just make us a better country; they reaffirmed that we are a great country. President Kennedy once said, “Our problems are man-made –- therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.” These are difficult years for our country. But we are Americans. We are tougher than the times we live in, and we are bigger than our politics have been. So let’s meet the moment. Let’s get to work, and let’s show the world once again why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.