America’s Aversion to ObamaCare Continues to Grow on the Second Anniversary of its Enactment

Today, March 23, 2012, marks the two year anniversary of when President Obama signed ObamaCare into law.

When the law was passed, the President and his followers claimed that the American people would support the law once they learned all that the law offered them. As then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously said, Congress had “to pass the [health care] bill so that [Americans] can find out what is in it”.

Over the past two years, however, despite the efforts of the President and his followers to convince Americans to warm up to ObamaCare, we have not been convinced. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week, two-thirds of Americans (67%) want the Supreme Court to invalidate ObamaCare or at least the individual mandate, which requires millions of Americans to buy and indefinitely maintain health insurance or face annual penalties. This poll signals that people from diverse political and social backgrounds are united in their opposition to ObamaCare.

This poll comes on the eve of the Supreme Court’s three days worth of oral arguments on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Next Monday through Wednesday, March 26-28, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the ObamaCare challenge brought by more than half the States.

On the morning of each oral argument, I will highlight on this website the issue(s) the Court will consider that day and will give you information about how to listen to the oral argument audio recordings each day. For now, you can learn more about the options the Court has in resolving the ObamaCare case by reading my previous post here.

The case the Supreme Court will consider next week is one of the more than twenty lawsuits filed in 2010 and 2011 challenging ObamaCare. We, at the American Center for Law & Justice (“ACLJ”), filed one of the earliest challenges to ObamaCare, which is now pending at the Supreme Court. You can access information about the ACLJ’s case here and here.

The large number of lawsuits challenging ObamaCare was just the tip of the iceberg of America’s disdain for the health care law. The more the public has learned about ObamaCare and its implications, the more we despise it.

When the law was being considered, the President and his followers claimed that it would cost us about $900 billion. That breathtakingly large figure seems like a bargain compared to ObamaCare’s true cost. The Congressional Budget Office announced this month that the health care coverage costs of ObamaCare alone will be about $1.76 trillion, nearly twice as much as originally claimed. When you add in the costs to implement the law and the other costs, ObamaCare will cost us $2.6 trillion over the next ten years.

Moreover, Americans’ anger about ObamaCare increased after it was used by the United States Department of Health & Human Services (“HHS”) as a basis for mandating businesses and religious organizations with fifty or more employees to include contraceptive, sterilization, and abortifacient coverage in their health insurance plans, despite any religious objections.

As my colleague Geoffrey Surtees has pointed out, this HHS mandate is a direct assault on the religious liberty of Americans. You can read some of his posts here, here, and here. In response to this new attack on our religious liberty, the ACLJ this month filed the first lawsuit in the country brought by a private business to overturn the HHS mandate.

On this second anniversary of ObamaCare, and on the eve of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments, Americans will voice their opposition to the HHS mandate. At noon today, thousands of Americans will be standing up against this mandate, which is undermining their religious freedom, at rallies held across the country.

I think it is fitting to point out that today is also the two hundred and thirty-seventh anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous speech that helped convince the Virginia House of Burgesses to send troops to join the Revolutionary War. His speech ended with the following words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Now, as in Patrick Henry’s day, patriotic Americans, as demonstrated by the ObamaCare lawsuits and by the HHS mandate protests occurring across the country, will not shy away from standing up to a government that assails their fundamental liberties.