What accounts for the public’s sharp hostility to Obamacare? Democrats on the Hill would probably say that opponents just don’t know what’s good for them. But I don’t think we’re that dumb. Arthur Brooks (sorry I’m just now posting his article from yesterday) sees the resistance as coming from our core values:
Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America’s free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.
First, Americans recoil at policies that strip choices from citizens and pass them to bureaucrats. ObamaCare systematically does so. The current proposals in Congress would effectively limit choice across the entire spectrum of health care: What kind of health insurance citizens can buy, what kind of doctors they can see, what kind of procedures their doctors will perform, what kind of drugs they can take, and what treatment options they may have.
This may be hyperbolic on my part, but I’ve begun to think of the current Congress as functioning like a second Constitutional Convention—the changes they could usher in might be just as transforming as the acceptance of the U.S. Constitution. Only this time we’re not supposed to know that big changes are coming.