ACA: elections matter

November 5, 2013Letters to the Editor

Regarding Darryl Kirschner’s letter of Oct. 25 (“It’s still bad law”) — Often aggrieved and just as often wrong, the writer is at it again.  He would have us believe there has not been a referendum on the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — and that the American people have not been heard.  How silly. 

In the November 2012 presidential election, the Republican candidate vowed to defund Obamacare on his first day.  Almost every pundit out there said the election was a referendum on the president and his policies — specifically Obamacare.  Many Republicans were sure they had a winning hand and probably scheduled Obamacare death panel parties.  Imagine how stunned the writer was when his worldview was repudiated by a majority of American voters.  President Obama comfortably won re-election. 

The writer claims members of Congress who voted for the ACA were acting against the wishes of a majority of their constituents.  A close look at the voter tallies indicates the Democrats held a solid, though small, majority of all votes cast for members of the House of Representatives in the 2012 election.  More people voted for a Democratic House.  If so many folks were unhappy, why didn’t the Democrats lose seats (they actually picked up seats in 2012)?  Oh, opines the writer and his ilk, those aren’t Americans, they’re takers. 

He cherry picks poll data to suggest a majority of the population opposes Obamacare.  He’s absolutely right, but not the way he would have us believe.  Fully one-third of the people dissatisfied with Obamacare are unhappy because the law did not go far enough (I’m one of them); many prefer a single payer system. 

What Kirchner doesn’t tell us is that an overwhelming number of Americans did not approve of the tactics used by the Republicans to try to force change, and a sizable percentage of those folks also wanted the law to go into effect.