Beast of the Year 2011: Obamacare

The votes are in, and The Konformist readers have spoken. Obamacare is your choice for the 2011 Beast of the Year - a choice that is well deserved.

What started as a movement to finally give universal healthcare coverage in the USA (sparked by Michael Moore's 2007 documentary Sicko) morphed into Obama's more vague "health care reform" and finally into the bloated law known as Obamacare. Rather than showing interest in providing health care to Americans, the main focus of the law is in providing more profits to private insurance companies, the parasitic oligopoly at the heart of the healthcare crisis. Whatever the new requirements are on the insurance corps is minor compared to the mandate that all Americans purchase health insurance, a mandate that has no legal precedent. The most indicting thing about Obamacare is it was a healthcare strategy designed by right-wing think tanks in the nineties as a response to the Clinton plan for real universal coverage. That is what makes the whole debate over the law so perverse: it is establishment "liberals" who are defending this extremely right-wing proposal rather than attacking it. Thus, Obamacare shows how much the frame of debate has been distorted in the age of Obama not only in healthcare, but in politics in general.

Runner-Up: Teabaggers

In the unlikely event that Obamacare can no longer fill its duties as Beast of the Year, the Teabaggers are ready to take over the crown. Rest assured the BOTY trophy is in good hands either way. The winners of the 2010 election, the Teabaggers a group of fake "populist" politicians who have exploited legitimate economic frustrations in the most repellant of ways.

In any case, we salute you, Obamacare and Teabaggers. Congratulations, and keep up the great work!!!