Gary Johnson Rips Into Obamacare

Former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who was the Libertarian Partys presidential candidate in 2012, ripped into President Barack Obamas health care law on Tuesday.

The news is hitting today that only 50,000 people have so far enrolled for coverage under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, Johnson wrote supporters on Tuesday. Thats only one-tenth of the number that was predicted for the first month of enrollment. President Obama, of course, is blaming this massive failure on the website mess -- and that probably had something to do with it.

But this isnt about a website. Its about the government trying to take over one of our most basic and critical needs: our health, Johnson added. We who believe in liberty and limited government have a great many complaints and battles to fight to keep the government from meddling unnecessarily in our lives, our families and our livelihoods. All those battles are important.

Johnson tore into the law as government coercion that I would suggest is not just wrong, but immoral.

Millions of Americans are finding that, contrary to Obamas promises, they are losing their health insurance or at best being informed that the cost of their coverage is skyrocketing, Johnson insisted. The result is that millions are being forced into government-managed and regulated health care, against their true wishes. That, my friends, is coercion at its worst.

Johnson added he thought politicians in Washington knew what would happen when they passed the law.

When they passed the Affordable Care Act and wrote the regulations to implement it, they knew exactly what they were doing, Johnson insisted. They wanted to force us out of making our own health care decisions, and into a system where the government is making those decisions. Life and death decisions.

In short, website issues aside, the takeover of health care is going precisely according to the big-government plan, Johnson wrote. Even the people in Congress who voted against it are now debating how to fix it -- after millions of Americans have had their insurance policies cancelled, changed or priced out of affordability.

Johnson, who has opened the door to a second presidential bid in 2016, called for getting government out of health care.