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Will the Never Trumpers 'own' ObamaCare if Clinton wins?
08/03/2016   By Rick Manning | The Hill
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ObamaCare had another bad month, as four more of the co-ops set up with U.S. taxpayer dollars to provide consumers with a nonprofit choice for insurance failed — this time in Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio and Oregon. Out of $2.4 billion in "loans" by the federal government to the 23 original co-ops, $1.7 billion has been lost with few expectations that any of the co-ops will survive for the long haul.

Nonprofit Quarterly magazine writes that these co-ops are failing due to being, "hit hard by 'adverse selection,' meaning that many policyholders are people with greater need for medical services, such as people with chronic health conditions, pre-existing conditions, health histories, and/or risk factors for illness or disability."

If true, then the predictable, rapid failure of ObamaCare co-ops have put hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable patients out on the streets, many of them mid-treatment, and with the predicted failure of the rest of the co-op system in the near future, the demand for change will be strong on both sides of the aisle in 2017.

On top of the collapsing co-op system and general public opposition to ObamaCare, health insurers are finding that the terms of the deal they cut with the devil to support the law are strangling their businesses. United Healthcare has already dropped out of most of the healthcare exchange system effective 2017, citing two-year losses of $1 billion from servicing those customers, and other insurers like Humana are dramatically cutting back their ObamaCare exposure.

The one thing that America can count on due to ObamaCare's effective demise is that the debate over what our nation's healthcare system will look like is going to be rejoined in 2017, and whoever is elected president will be the key player in that decision.

Never Trumpers who have beaten drums against the government takeover of one-sixth of the economy through ObamaCare will, through their decision to, at best, provide aid and comfort to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, have made the decision that they are willing to trade away any chance of a GOP repeal.

Under a Clinton presidency, Republicans in Congress will find themselves defending the existing system against demands by Clinton that, at the least, the people be provided a public option choice that allows eligible applicants to choose to become part of the already overburdened Medicare system rather than using a private insurance option. Under Clinton, the public option pathway to single-payer would become odds on favorite to become law, and the socialized medicine battle will have been lost.

While many Never Trumpers — still upset that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or their fallback, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), didn't win the GOP nomination — argue that a Trump presidency might be bad for the country, they know that a Clinton presidency will be disastrous for virtually every principle they claim to hold dear. The reality is that not only is the balance of power on the Supreme Court, and the transformation of the entire federal judiciary at stake in this election, but the foundation of the nation's healthcare system also hangs in the balance.

Leading Never Trump magazine National Review has published a number of articles over the past year chronicling the demise of ObamaCare. One recent opinion piece, "On Obamacare, the President Ignores Unpleasant Realities," opines about the public option that "This is the logical next step for those who would like to see all Americans enrolled in a government-run insurance plan."

And that is exactly what the nation will get if Clinton is elected.

While there are no guarantees about what a Trump administration might support, it is clear that the personnel surrounding a President Trump will be firmly supportive of opening up insurance markets and rebuilding a market-based system around the concept of competition with an emphasis on restoring the patient-doctor relationship rather than the current patient-insurer-government-doctor relationship.

It is equally clear that those who insist on holding on to the Never Trump mantle after the GOP convention will bear the responsibility, as their continuing attacks on Trump only help put Clinton closer to calling the shots on the next round of national healthcare legislation.

For those who have spent the past seven-and-a-half years railing against ObamaCare from its initial discussion onward, the time is now to decide if they are willing to sacrifice any chance of restoring our nation's healthcare system to one based upon markets, all because they lost the primary election to someone who they never expected to succeed.

From this day forward, every word written and spoken undermining Trump is an act of backhanded support for Clinton and the policies that she will push forward. So, Never Trumpers, if you want Clinton to finish the job of the nationalization of the healthcare system, keep bashing Trump, but don't come back in 2017 trying to set the conservative position against HillaryCare when you accepted that outcome through your general election activities, making it a virtual impossibility to stop.

It is time to focus on the real consequences of a Clinton presidency and the permanent entrenchment of the Obama agenda as the fight shifts to Clinton's attempts to expand upon it.

When viewed through that light, there is no excuse for anyone who claims to be a conservative or a Republican in any form to continue their attacks on Donald Trump. For Never Trump, it is time to suck it up and move on.

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