It’s always there. Night after night. Turn on your TV, and there it is. Oil spewing into the Gulf from that damaged pipe. The environmental devastation. The spoiled beaches. The oil-soaked pelicans, the dead turtles. Families no longer sure how they’re going to make a living. The pain seems unending.
The press, for good reason, has been focused on this story for two months now, almost to the exclusion of anything else that’s going on. It’s a lot like the media coverage of the health care debate not too long ago. It was all they talked about. Now they’ve all but dropped any mention of it.
But the Cincinnati Enquirer, to its credit, last Saturday ran an Associated Press story headlined: “Health Overhaul to Force Employer Plans to Change.” I’ll quote from the article:
President Obama couldn’t have been clearer during the health care debate; he said time and again that if you already had health care coverage, there was nothing to worry about; this new legislation wouldn’t change your coverage at all. Here’s Obama back on July 28th of 2009: “But keep in mind – I mean, this is something that I can’t emphasize enough … if you are happy with the health care that you’ve got, then keep it… nobody is going to go out there and say, you’ve got to change your health care plan.”
Now we find out that that wasn’t true at all. In fact, it’s estimated that as many as four out of five small businesses will no longer be able to cover their employees under their current plans. That’s going to affect an awful lot of people. James Gelfand, Health Policy Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that “what we are getting here is a clear indication that most plans will have to change… these changes are most certainly going to be accompanied by costs.”
I guess it really shouldn’t surprise us that the health care legislation pedaled by Obama/Pelosi/Reid, and supported by liberals like Steve Driehaus, isn’t what they led us to believe it was. They also said over and over again that the total cost would be under $1 trillion, and then we learned recently that it was now projected to cost at least $115 billion more than they promised, pushing the cost to well over $1 trillion.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of being deceived by the people who are supposed to be looking out for us in Washington. It’s bad enough that they’re incompetent. But we at least deserve to be told the truth.
That’s one of the reasons so many people can’t wait to voice their frustration this November at the ballot box. They’re tired of being ignored, misled, and taken for granted. Change is coming. And it may well be even bigger than anyone now imagines.