ACA will do more to damage than repair

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Thus spake Nancy Pelosi, one of the Democrats' sainted lawgivers.

“The bill” is now the laughably, inappropriately named Affordable Care Act.

This bizarre legislative eructation now oozes across the political and economic landscape as a suffocating and toxic miasma, poisoning everything it touches.

“Finding out” means numerous things: no we can't keep our doctors or our existing health care plans after all.

For many, the ACA is anything but “affordable.” The signup website is structurally flawed. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that the law will kill millions of jobs.

The law's creators are “finding out” that the brat spawned in their legislative love feast now threatens to devour them politically.

Now come fevered efforts at spin and damage control.

“We're giving you a better plan (complete with costly mandated features, whether you need them or not).” “We're sending in our A-team to fix the website.”

Our mercurial president's arbitrary and extra-constitutional imperial decrees are bending the law like licorice to confront each crisis du jour.

And now comes the comical claim that the law will boost the economy by, among other things, rescuing employees from “job-lock,” notwithstanding the extravagant burdens it places on employers.

Without question health care reform is sorely needed. But this hideous Big Government kludge foisted on us will do far more to damage than to repair.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids