Is Obamacare Like the Ring of Power?

PPPS (Littleton)—As our nation debates the implementation of the President's signature legislation and sole accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, we received an interesting poem and link to an article published by one of our loyal readers, Citizen Caryn.

We decided to share the poem and encourage people to read her excellent article. 

 

One Ring to rule them all, 

One Ring to find them, 

One Ring to bring them all 

and in the darkness bind them.

 —J.R.R. Tolkien from Lord of the Rings

 Obamacare: The Ring of Power 

Caryn Boddie, Western Bluebird blog

November 11, 2013

One ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I'm one of those Americans who has received a cancellation letter from my insurance company because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare. I bought my policy when I was laid off in 2011. Now, my premiums and deductible will go up when I can least afford it, and I'll probably be unable to keep the doctor I've had for over 25 years.

It's as if we were living happily in the Shire, able to buy health insurance in a free market, and to work and  play outside the control of anyone but ourselves. But, the Eye of Sauron — an ever-growing government — was upon us, and it wanted our liberties. It devised to take them through one ring of power: Obamacare.

So, we picked up this ring of power and put it on a chain and set out together to take it to Mordor to destroy it, but certain good-but-misguided people wanted to take the ring from us and wear it for themselves and prevent us from throwing it into the fires inside of Mt. Doom and they allowed the healthcare law to come into effect and stopped us on my journey . . . .

Pardon me, I digress.

This isn't the Shire and I'm not Frodo.  I'm a woman living in the suburbs in Colorado, an unemployed woman, and, Obamacare is not the ring of power of the president, and his Precious.  Or, is it? Come to think of it, the president did lie to me about it, repeatedly. And, the Democrats were very sneaky in the way they passed it into law, and they keep insisting it's the law of the land and they tell us to leave it alone, because they won . . . .

Sorry, got carried away.

We did have the freedom to choose insurance on a free market, though, and most of us were able to afford it with a little fancy dancing. Now, the government's power move into our healthcare will cause use to pay for insurance policies that don't fit and are far too expensive for us. And, many of us are still out of work and our job searching is being made even harder by Obamacare.

It was already plenty hard for me, as it is for many women in their 50s. Fortunately for me and my family, my husband has a good job and we are hanging on in the middle class, even though our family budget has been cut by about 30 percent. Sadly, I was counting on this decade to be the time when I'd be able to sock away money for retirement and pay off the debt we incurred raising our kids. Nope, not happening.

On Saturday, November 9, 2013, Jonathan Hoenig said it this way on Cashin' In: "In a free market, you actually have to earn business through years of competence, successful dealings, and success.  And this is the fundamental difference between economic power like Walmart, which succeeds through trade,  and political power, which is Obamacare, which only works because of a government gun.  Obamacare is a gun brought to health care."

As government brought this weapon into our lives, I was hopeful that the US Supreme Court would protect us by ruling that the individual mandate in the law was unconstitutional, but that didn't happen. The Court affirmed the government's right to meddle in my economy under its taxing duties.  This was a big shock and disappointment.

We found out that Saruman was not a good wizard at all; he was in league with Sauron.
So, the president's  healthcare law, which was passed along party lines with Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against it, is being rolled out. And, the people who are rolling it out are trying to silence our political speech by calling us names and mocking us.

This is nothing new for me when it comes to Obamacare.  In August 2009, when Congress was working to pass Obamacare, I went to North High School in Denver—where my grandmother had attended—with a sign because a rally would be there for the president's health care legislation. Serendipitously, I ended up where all the supporters of Obamacare entered a fenced area. I stood on the sidewalk next to the gate with a sign that read, "Yes, we can . . . do better than Obamacare. Go back to the drawing board. Plz!"

Obama supporters then tried everything to get rid of me, including sending a lawyer out to threaten me and to bring the police. The police came, looked at me, rolled their eyes and went away, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with my sign.

I expect Obama supporters will continue to try and silence my political speech in the future. I can deal with that. I am more concerned about them using the IRS to target me, because we've seen them do that . Nevertheless, I'm all in to destroy this ring of power with my grassroots friends. I have faith in the Lord.

Gandalf will help when all seems lost. He will call the eagles to come and lift us out of danger.

Afterall, who am we?  Well, I can tell you, I'm just a humble citizen, someone who's been a family caregiver for years—for children and seniors—and who has always worked, either in part-time or full-time staff positions or as a freelancer or self-employed writer and editor. I'm a responsible citizen who pays the mortgage and the bills, and who has volunteered for church, schools and community consistently over the years.

Once, I was a "bleeding heart liberal" but  I moved to the center and to center right and then joined the Tea Party. How did that happen? The events of the Great Recession accelerated the transformation in me. My husband and I stood up because we could see our liberties —and those of our children —were in jeopardy.  

And, even though we are mere members of the middle class we do help the poor, dear leaders.  If you'd just asked us nicely, we would have helped more. Maybe the government could have put a box to check on the IRS forms  and we could have donated some amount to cover health insurance for the poor.
 
We could have taken a much simpler route to help our brethren in the Shire, but we didn't because Sauron wanted power and control more than anything.

So,  let's  create a cancellation letter for Obamacare.  Let's throw Obama's Precious into the fire. Then, we can restore economic and political liberty to the People, and return to the Shire.

Caryn Boddie is a writer, editor, and communications professional who lives in Littleton, Colorado.

Note: The image of the ring, before adding Obamacare was from a blog by Lee Hadley.