It was late June in the mid-‘90s and I had recently purchased a couple hundred cow-calf pairs to re-stock the ranch. We were trailing about 300 head from the ranch in the valley to timberline on the Big Horn Mountains and it was our fourth day in the saddle. Twenty guest cowboys from across the country had signed up for our week-long cattle drive adventure and after 40 miles on the trail, most had become savvy to the whole process. The cows were another story. The 300 confused pair came from parts all across Montana with those from the eastern plains completely baffled by strange things like timber and running water. Usually, the biggest challenge to cowboys trailing a native herd into the high country was holding the leads back so the mommas don’t abandon their wee ones while sprinting to greener pastures. Imagine Wal-Mart on Black Friday with a parking lot full of patrons clutching EBT cards with no spending limit and you have the proper visual. A race to the top was not our problem as we approached the heat of mid-day.

I was in the leads with five other guest cowboys and we were battling a small group of cows through the last timber patch on the divide between Lick and Lake Creek. Even at 9000 feet, it was getting hot and with the Lake Creek pasture but a mile further, the cows had all the cattle driving they could stand. Our ponies were exhausted and even the stock dogs collapsed in the shade the instant there was a lapse in the action. We struggled on knowing if we could get at least a few cows up the Jeep trail it would be easier to get the remaining herd over the top. Notice I said easier, not easy. Thirty minutes earlier we had left Lick Creek with 30 pair, but spilled many in the downed timber. So as to not lose all the others while chasing a few, I hollered at the cowboys to focus on our main little group. Every hundred yards our herd grew smaller and smaller until Dale, a plumber from Missoula offered, “I hope when we get to the top we have at least one cow and not just six horses.” I chuckled and today looking back I realize how those words perfectly fit this fiasco called the launch of Obamacare. I wonder if Secretary Sebelius quietly confided to President Obama she hoped by the end of the first day, analogically their getting to the top, they had at least one subject enrolled. Miraculously, they had six.

If you think getting six enrollees after investing 634 million taxpayer dollars is a miserable failure, you are wrong. Obamacare is functioning exactly as it was designed because Obamacare has nothing to do with healthcare it is about control; specifically the government control garnered by building a federal database containing the financial and personal records of every peasant under the king’s rule. Do you see why the first step of sign-up is surrendering personal information? Couple this with the government forced collapse of private insurers by mandating coverage of existing conditions and you see why the left’s quest to create a Marxist utopia has scored their supreme victory. The forces of liberty will hide in the shadows for centuries.