Sacred Cows, Obamacare & Irrationality

I hate  sacred cows. Mine, yours, or anyone’s.

       A sacred cow is defined as anything beyond criticism or questioning. Something like our President or his healthcare law.

Although the Republicans will forever be blamed for the recent government shutdown, the whole thing started when they foolishly thought they could attack Obamacare, our President’s lone domestic achievement and #1 sacred cow. They would have loved to kill the law entirely, of course. But when they failed in their attempt to defund it, they tried to find a few things reasonable  Democrats might be able to agree to.

Since the Obamacare website is a disaster, maybe the individual mandate for health insurance could be delayed for a year, just like the President had unilaterally done with the employer mandate. But no, the President was not willing to consider that.

In a previous vote, a large number of Democrats had joined Republicans in opposing the new tax on medical equipment, so maybe that tax could be eliminated from Obamacare. But this time the Democrats joined ranks with the President and refused to drop the tax.

Various other tweaks were proposed the past few weeks, but President Obama seemed offended that the Republicans would even think  of touching his signature piece of legislation—a law originally passed without a single Republican vote. No, Obamacare must not be repealed, defunded, delayed, or even tweaked.

It’s a sacred cow, don’t you see? Not just to the President, but to every Democratic in the Senate or the House of Representatives. So much for reasonableness.

It apparently doesn’t matter to President Obama, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi that every one  of the President’s promises about the law has been broken.

He had repeatedly told us we could keep our present health insurance if we liked it. But now people are being dropped from their health plans, and workers are being cut back to part-time so their employers don’t have to offer insurance.

We were told an average family would save thousands of dollars a year on their health coverage, but in fact the opposite has happened—huge increases in nearly everyone’s premium.

The law was structured so that more young people would buy insurance, putting more money into the system to pay for the uninsured. But few young people are interested when they see the cost.

Like one Democratic Senator observed, the whole thing has been a train wreck. Yet if a train wreck happens to be a sacred cow, it remains untouched and unchallenged. After all, those mean old Republicans are just haters,  the media would like us to believe.

The problem with sacred cows is that they cause people to act in irrational  ways—not even in their own best interest.

And make no mistake about it: the Republicans have sacred cows too. So do you. So do I. We have things in our lives that are untouchable. Things that are idols.

God, deliver us from our sacred cows. Free us from our idols. May we have no other God in our life but You.

 

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