By any measure, ObamaCare is already a tremendous failure. New estimates developed by the Gallup organization indicate that some 4.5 million Americans have lost their health insurance since Obama signed his dream act into law.

When Congress was debating the legislation, the Congressional Budget Office - probably under intense pressure from Princess Nancy and Democrat leaders - claimed that the number of insured Americans would actually increase in the first year of federalized health care. By some 6 million.

That means we are something on the order of 10 million families behind the estimates CBO used to calculate the cost of ObamaCare. Put another way, those people should be on private insurance plans, reducing the public cost of covering uninsured families. So not only do we see the problem of health care access growing under the president's plan, we are experiencing rising costs.

To say that those outcomes are the exact opposite of what Pelosi and Obama promised the American people is to understate the matter.

Critics pointed out that federalization would naturally destroy the private insurance sector, or at least make it a wholly-owned subsidiary of the government. That could only increase costs and bureaucracy. It is simply a law of nature that anything the government subsidizes becomes more expensive.

This problem is coming to Idaho. The state's insurance lobby is already working overtime to force Idaho legislators to go along with a plan to create Obama's "insurance exchange" here. Their calculus is that they must aggressively move to get a piece of the federal subsidies - or be forced out of the health insurance market altogether. This will no doubt be one of the signature issues of the 2012 session.

 

Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed SB1115 into law on Monday. This legislation would prohibit any future insurance exchange established under ObamaCare from providing elective abortion insurance.

Hopefully the entire menace of ObamaCare can be beaten back through the courts or the Congress. But if Idaho is forced into participating in this federalized health care system, then this step by the Legislature will prove vitally important.

Research by the Abortion Industry itself demonstrates that public funding of abortion greatly increases the chances a woman will choose to end her baby's life before it draws a breath.

That makes sense. More than the lure of "free" money and "free" pass out of a difficult situation, the offer of taxpayer-paid abortions implies a public approval of that abortion. The woman, or girl, in a challenging pregnancy can easily reason that if the government is willing to pay for the abortion, it must be the right thing to do. Who voluntarily pays for evil?

We have spent much time this session dealing with public financing of abortions for this very reason. Not only did we press for this bill to become law, but we have put enormous effort into fixing the abortion funding rules used by the Department of Health & Welfare. (HCR 23). In tough economic times, the money matters. But much more important is the question of public sanction of a "private" decision to end the life of an innocent.

For a woman under pressure, the lure of a "free" abortion is virtually coercive.

We commend Governor Otter for signing this bill, and for his entire crusade against ObamaCare. We wish to publicly thank Sen. Curt McKenzie and Rep. Brent Crane for serving as lead sponsors of this crucial bill in the Legislature.

 

A new national precedent may be in the works. In the wake of Bart Stupak's decision to back President Obama's abortion-expansion bill, Indiana Right to Life has established a new policy of not endorsing any Democrats for political office. The policy will hold regardless of a candidate's claim to be "pro-Life".

The Indiana pro-Life movement is feeling particularly betrayed by the final vote on Obama's health care bill: 3 Democrats who have always claimed to be pro-Life joined Stupak in getting Pelosi the votes she needed to impose her abortion agenda on America. Indiana Democrats Brad Ellsworth, Joe Donnelly and Baron Hill were accused of breaking faith with the pro-Life movement, which had previously supported their candidacies.

"Ellsworth's collapse under pressure from the White House and Speaker Pelosi ... leaves us no alternative," said Right to Life Executive Director Mike Fichter. "Leadership matters, and the reality is that Democratic leaders are advancing an abortion agenda at an alarming rate...."

There may have been a day when it was possible to be a Democrat and a pro-Lifer, but those days are and circumstances are becoming increasingly rare with the radical leadership now in firm control of the national party. That same ideological purity is tightening its grip here in Idaho.

In the last session of the Idaho Legislature, all Senate Democrats opposed our conscience legislation - which is tantamount to an official refusal to even acknowledge the right of others to see the abortion issue differently from themselves. There were two brave souls in the Idaho House - James Ruchti and Branden Durst - who had the guts to buck the choke-hold that abortion zealots have on the party. But they paid a big personal price.

It is difficult for the average American to grasp how abortion-obsessed Obama & Co. are. As we face unprecedented challenges - staggering debt, huge unemployment, wars in two nations - it is almost unbelievable to read that these people have the time and energy to impose their abortion agenda not just on Americans - but on foreign nations, as well. Last week, Hillary Clinton used the power of her high office to demand that the Canadian government support her agenda of creating an abortion right in every nation on the planet. Today we learn that President Obama is applying heavy pressure on the government of his native Kenya to create a constitutional right to abortion.

That kind of manic fixation on abortion will ultimately force Democrats of conscience to withdraw their participation from a party whose highest agenda item seems to be the destruction of new life in the womb.