The Solution to More Government - Ain’t More Government

Obamacare’s official legislative name was, of course, “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Washington, D.C. is very good at naming things. DC remains very terrible at doing things.

Patients haven’t been protected by the law - they’ve been assaulted by it. And affordability was exterminated at the moment of enactment.

All of the Obamacare promises - were a lie.

Obama: Health Insurance for All

Except:

Obamacare Will Leave 30 Million Uninsured

And there was:

Obama Promises ObamaCare Won't Add ‘One Dime to Our Deficits’

Except:

Now There Can Be No Doubt: Obamacare Will Increase The Deficit

And then there was:

President Obama's Pledge Never to Raise Taxes on Anyone Making Less Than $250,000 a Year

Except:

ObamaCare's 7 Tax Hikes On Under $250,000-A-Year Earners

And of course there was:

Obama Promises To Lower Health Insurance Premiums by $2,500 Per Year

Obama: Under Obamacare, Health Care Will Cost Less Than Your Cell Phone Bill

Except:

Health Insurance Premiums Rise Sharply in 2011

ObamaCare Economist: ‘In 2012 Premiums Will Be Higher Than They Are Today - No Question’

2013: Massive Premium Increases Set for Obamacare

3,137-County Analysis: Obamacare Increased 2014 Individual-Market Premiums By Average Of 49%

2015: Health Insurers Seek Hefty Rate Boosts

2016: Obamacare Premiums to Soar 22% on Average

Obamacare Premiums to Increase 25 Percent in 2017

Obamacare Premiums for 2018 Projected to Make Health Insurance Unaffordable for Many

That has to be the most obnoxious cell phone bill in the history of cell phone bills.

Oh - and we already have an example of government-only health care “for all”: The Department of Veterans Affairs. How’s that going?

Veterans Affairs = Fail

Nine Major Veterans Affairs Failures

Confirmed: One-Third of the Vets on VA's Waiting List Are Dead

A Fatal Wait: Veterans Languish and Die on a VA Hospital's Secret List

1,700 Veterans Missing From VA Wait List in Phoenix

VA Fail: Another $500 Million IT ‘Failure’ for Veterans Affairs

We go into such exquisite detail of the history of all things government medicine - to prove without question that every single solitary thing DC promised about it was a lie. Everything DC said would happen - was the polar opposite of what actually happened.

Which brings us to this past Friday. Whereupon a gaggle of DC Democrats announced their alleged “Better Deal Economic Agenda.” Their ‘better deal” - is better in the way the Affordable Care Act is “affordable.”

Included in their slate of government-expanding, freedom-and-our-wallets-contracting nonsense was:

Senate & House Democrats Unveil ‘A Better Deal On Universal High-Speed Internet’

Given DC’s track record on Obamacare (and the national debt, and Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid, and the Post Office, and Amtrak, and…) - I’m not sure this is in fact gong to be a better deal.

Democrats Push for Billions to Bring High-Speed Internet to Everyone

Ah…more government money - taken from us, or added to our $20 trillion debt. That sounds much more like DC.

Except the federal government has already spent billions of dollars on government broadband. There was $7.2 billion sluiced to it in the 2009 alleged “Stimulus.” State and local governments have wasted massive coin on this as well - going back almost a decade before last decade’s federal “Stimulus.” And all of it has been nothing short of a cumulative, cataclysmic disaster.

Broadband Boondoggles: A Map of Failed Taxpayer-Funded Networks

History Is Littered With Failed Muni Broadband

Municipal Broadband: Many Promises, More Failures

Government-Run Broadband Will Fail in Court and in the Real World

Municipal Broadband Is No Utopia

Municipal Broadband: A Bad Deal For Taxpayers

Municipal Broadband Fails - Again

Yet Another Terrible Internet 'Stimulus' Project

Muni Wi-Fi Projects Struggle with Technology and Economic Challenges: “Municipal wireless rollouts from Philadelphia to San Francisco face unrealistic demands and business models.”

What Other Cities Should Learn from Philly’s Failed Municipal Broadband Effort

Lake County Another Example of Failed Municipal Broadband

In Appalachia, a Public Broadband Project Hits Snags

Why, it’s almost as if government isn’t very good at delivering Internet service. Just like it isn’t any good at delivering health insurance. Or balanced budgets. Or budgets free from hundreds of billions of dollars of annual fraud and abuse. Or the mail. Or….

There are nine million reasons why government stinks-out-loud at broadband delivery. Here are nine:

It’s Hard To Make GONs (Government-Owned Networks) Profitable.
GONs Don’t Spur Innovation Or Competition.
GONs Harm Competition.
GONs Don’t Reflect Consumer Demand.
It’s Hard To Prove GONs Help The Economy.
Government Can’t Keep Up.
GONs Have Immediate Opportunity Costs.
GONs Have Long-Term Opportunity Costs.
GONs Won’t Make Cities The Next Silicon Valley.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln - how did you like the play?

Of course, when government acts - you pay. And when government acts - government fails. What then?

What Happens When Municipal Broadband Fails? You Pay

You pay…again. I know - shocker, right?

This month marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the Communist revolution in Russia. Unleashing upon the planet an ideology that murdered 100 million people - and destroyed one hundred times that many lives. It ensures - with amoral certitude -profound economic misery for everyone subjected to it. Yet we still have tens of millions of adherents to this abject, systemic failure.

Of course government broadband hasn’t murdered anyone - but it is in its way just as huge a failure. Yet we, bizarrely, still have true believers in this particular lost cause.

Let us not yet again repeat historically-redundant, brutally-obvious failures. It’s such a frigging waste.

Oh: And it would be amazing how much more we all could afford - if government wasn’t trying to “help” make things more affordable.

This first appeared in Red State.

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