Your Opinion: Affordable Care Act destined to fail

Dear Editor:

As the president's first term draws to a close, it's clear that he hasn't evolved from his first months in office focusing on health care and not the struggling economy. When it comes to the business community, he continues to demonstrate a failure to understand what drives hiring and expansion and boasts his Health Care Bill that is destined to fail.

It's not unreasonable to hope that the president would have learned that small businesses - the top job creators in the country - only thrive when they have confidence that their risks have a reasonable chance of succeeding. That confidence comes through knowing what the future holds in the way of taxes, regulations and mandates.

The Obama administration has done little to offer any stability. To the contrary, small businesses have been hit with a health care reform plan that contains unknown penalties and additional taxation only adding to the pressure of the uncertain economy.

We need health reform, but it pales in comparison to millions of Americans unemployed and often unable to even put food on the table. As the intricacies of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act become clear, what becomes understood is that this bill is not the answer. When the president made it clear he would not be distracted by the economy and would instead focus on health care, Americans hoped that he would get it right and had learned from past failed attempts.

Unfortunately, the nation discovered that the president learned very little. Instead of devising a bi-partisan plan that would incrementally make the changes necessary to make health care accessible and affordable to more Americans, the president chose a strictly partisan path that has been the center of litigation almost from the start.

As Americans, we are raised to believe that we have the right to make choices for ourselves with little government intrusion. So when the president proposed, and Congress passed, a plan that required citizens to purchase private health insurance whether they wanted to or not and, intruded upon the decision-making authority of patients and their doctors, most Americans understandably revolted.

This issue revealed a president whose core belief is that the government is the best caretaker for the people, who apparently cannot be trusted to navigate their own lives without bureaucrats holding their hands.

This is a fight for what America is all about as a nation of free and independent people. It will fail because it is in stark contrast to the fundamental principles on which this country has long stood.