Missouri Farm Bureau has long had policy opposing the Affordable Health Care Act. A recent conversation brought home to me just how important and correct that policy is. A county leader called to tell me about her situation and how Obamacare has affected her family. Like most farmers, her family depends upon the individual insurance market for their policy, and like millions of other Americans, they’ve just received a cancellation notice. Because they’re the kind of people who actually live out the values of self-reliance and individual initiative so many people talk about, she was profoundly upset that her family qualified for subsidies on the government exchanges. “We can afford to pay for our own care!” she said, but also pointed out that giving subsidies to those who can care for themselves will lead to even more dependency on the federal government.

I imagine she’s something of an outlier and most Americans will gladly accept those subsidies. I congratulate her and her family on their insistence on paying their own way, and I hope that kind of independence is rekindled by the nationwide disgust with the roll out of our country’s new healthcare plan. The combination of subsidies, mandates and regulations is, as Tom T. Hall once said, “a perfect example of a negatory romance.” We’ve had a long love affair with complicated and expensive government programs, but this may end our belief in a free lunch courtesy of Washington, D.C. As one disappointed Obamacare voter pointed out: “I was in favor of the health care plan, but I didn’t realize that I would have to help pay for other people’s health care!”

So far, most of the cancellations have taken place in the individual market, and the President’s press secretary is at pains to point out that “only” 14 million people are involved in the individual market. Fourteen million seems like a big number to me. That would be everybody in Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa. Of course, since the business mandate was waived for a year, we’ll have another wave of cancellations next year. I’ve seen estimates as high as 96 million people losing their insurance policies, but nobody really knows because we don’t know what will happen to rates as Obamacare stutters into existence. One thing is sure: No group may be harmed more than farmers, because most of us don’t have employer-provided coverage and we depend upon the private market for insurance.

We have many problems in our health care markets; reforms that help control costs and provide wider coverage are desperately needed. Obamacare is not that reform. As our Farm Bureau delegates realized years ago, health insurance is complicated. It takes a special kind of arrogance to think the federal government could solve the problem in just three years with a massive, unwieldy and poorly thought out piece of legislation. We do need to go back to the drawing board, be more modest in our goals and legislate common sense reforms that acknowledge most people can take care of their health insurance without government subsidies or interference.

Blake Hurst, of Westboro, Mo., is the president of Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.
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