Why Obamacare Offers Voter Registration

During the past week conservatives have been all atwitter, as it were, about a development that shouldn’t have surprised anyone with the slightest familiarity with the Obama administration or the Democrat party. It seems that the online application drafted by HHS for those who wish to buy health coverage through Obamacare’s insurance exchanges asks applicants if they would like to register to vote, and facilitates that process if the answer is “yes.” Conservatives are outraged that “reform” is being used to bolster the roles of registered Democrats.

Louisiana Republican Charles Boustany, chairman of the House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee, said as much in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “The draft documents wander into areas outside the department’s purview and links applications for health insurance subsidies to voter registration.… While the healthcare law requires that government agencies collect vast information about Americans’ personal lives, it does not give your department an interest in whether individual Americans choose to vote.”

Rep. Boustany is mistaken. Of course Commissar Sebelius and HHS have an “interest in whether individual Americans choose to vote.” Where the chairman goes awry is in the underlying assumption of his letter. He discusses Obamacare as if its primary purpose involves providing health care. By now, however, it should be obvious to the meanest intelligence that PPACA is, and always has been, a vote-buying scheme.

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/04/01/why-obamacare-offers-voter-reg

 

Strawman fallacy