Death, Taxes, and Obamacare

By: Erick Erickson 
Democrats plan to make 2014 about the minimum wage. Several news reports suggest the party plans to coordinate with unions to get ballot initiatives going around the nation to raise the minimum wage. They think this will incentivize turn out for them in 2014. It is an admission against interest they think Obamacare is hurting them.
It is also foolhardy. Gay marriage initiatives drove Christian conservatives out to vote for President Bush and against gay marriage in 2004. Barack Obama is not on the ballot in 2014. There is no guarantee people will turn out to vote for the minimum wage and there is no guarantee, even if they did, that they’d also vote for a Democrat for Congress who will keep Obamacare.
As best the Democrats might try to change the subject, the horror stories about Obamacare will keep coming. Just last night on my radio show, a nurse from a local hospital called in. A patient showed up at her hospital emergency room on January 1st. His insurance had been cancelled so he went through the process of getting Obamacare. But it appeared he failed to complete the process. While the hospital tried to figure out where he needed to go and who could see him, he had a heart attack.

In Virginia, the UK’s Daily Mail interviewed patients who were turned away by hospitals because of their Obamacare related insurance snafus. And that’s just the start of a holiday week.
The Democrats are going to do their best to show as many anecdotes as possible favorable to Obamacare. But they have yet to reach a level of sign ups even equal to the number of people who’ve had their insurance cancelled. Still others, who will get Obamacare, will get increased out of pocket costs.
The Democrats have hoped people would rejoice at the subsidies. But now getting married will be more costly. Adding employees will be more costly. Having kids will be more costly. Don’t worry though. Young men now deemed adults at the age of 27 will get their pregnancies covered, even if they don’t think they can get pregnant.
About the only thing that can save the Democrats from this public poicy nightmare is John Boehner pushing amnesty forward. And that just might happen.