Obamacare not the will of the people

The June 29 staff editorial “Move beyond rancor on health care” made some assumptions that warrant closer examination. The editorial states that the president’s health insurance law is actually an expression of the will of the people. In truth, it is a $1.8 trillion collection of congressional kickbacks and exemptions hastily passed on a party-line vote before anyone had a chance to read it.

Can a law represent the will of the people if neither the people nor their representatives knew what was written in the law? As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi helpfully explained, Congress needed to “pass the bill to discover what was in it.”

So what do the American people think of the law? Those who are afraid of opposition to the law sometimes portray it as an issue where Americans are, by and large, undecided. This simply is not true. A Bloomberg poll taken shortly before the law was passed in 2010 found 50 percent in opposition to the law, with a mere 38 percent in favor. According to an earlier CNN poll, 53 percent were opposed, compared to 45 percent who supported it. Other polls around the same time show similar majority opposition.

The law hasn’t become any more popular since its passage. A June 24 Reuters poll placed opposition at 56 percent, while support remains low, at 44 percent. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the law, a CBS/NYT poll found that only 24 percent were hoping for a decision upholding the law in its current form, while 68 percent disagreed.

Readers should judge for themselves whether the numbers support the claim that this law is truly a result of “the people speaking through their elected representatives.”

Anthony Glosson

Campton Hills