Six years after a Democratic majority rammed the most complex piece of
domestic legislation in decades through a party line vote, using a
legislative technique that ensured the final bill would be a mess that
nobody actually advocated, the law, shockingly, isn’t working very well.
Thus reports
WRM at
The American Interest (thanks to
Instapundit).
Enrollment is only half of what proponents expected, premiums are
going up by double-digits, healthy people are shunning what they see as
an over-priced and underperforming program, the ‘cooperatives’ that
Democratic wonks gushed over are going belly-up, and insurance companies are fleeing the market in droves.And even more amazingly, the New York Times has sorted through the chaos and come up with the conclusion that the Obamacare mess is serious, costly, damaging—and very, very hard to fix.
It has been a hard couple of weeks for Obamacare. The
law’s online marketplaces — where people were supposed to be able to
easily shop for health insurance — have been suffering from high-profile
defections and double-digit premium increases.
Critics of Obamacare
have pointed to the recent problems as proof the market is not working,
while even the law’s staunchest defenders are arguing that the
marketplaces need some fixes.
The signature
domestic accomplishment of the Obama administration is, the Gray Lady
appears to be conceding, a dysfunctional mess. It’s likely that the next
president will have to spend time and political capital trying to undo
the harm that Obamacare is wreaking on an American health system that
was already in need of constructive reforms. Hillary Clinton’s first
venture into national politics was her failed effort to introduce health
care reform in her husband’s first term; will her own first term see
her having to go back to health care one more time? If so, one can be
fairly sure that she won’t be grateful to the predecessor who left her
with this sticky mess.
Tongue (firmly) in cheek,
Glenn Reynolds wags:
GEE, IF ONLY SOMEONE HAD WARNED ABOUT THIS BEFORE IT WAS RAMMED THROUGH ON A BOGUS, PARTY-LINE, PROCEDURAL VOTE
