April Showers Bring Obamacare Schadenfreude

It's raining today, the nice gentle rain that makes the grass grow, and the flowers bloom.  But just not today.

A very slow day for Obamacare Schadenfreude.  Might have to give this thread up.

Mr. Obama, maybe folks are mad because you’re a liar

Dear Mr. Obama,

Congratulations on getting 7.1 million people enrolled in Obamacare before the March 31st deadline!

Not to muddy the festivities by harping on technicalities, but I thought I’d pass along just a few corrections, in case you plan on giving anymore speeches or anything:

Alright, by ‘March 31st’ you mean ‘sometime in April,’ and by ‘deadline’ you mean‘suggestion which is subject to change.’

And, obviously, by ‘enrolled’ you mean ‘people who have filled some information out on a website.’

And by ’7.1 million’ you mean ‘probably like 858 thousand or something.’

In your speech on Tuesday, when you said that Obamacare is ‘the law’ and ‘it’s here to stay,’ you really meant that Obamacare is ‘a fluid and constantly adjusted set of unconstitutional decrees, which can be imposed or withdrawn by the Executive Branch at any point, for any reason, up to 21 times and counting.’ And by ‘here to stay,’you actually meant to say that ‘most of it is neither here nor staying, because you don’t want America to feel the full brunt of it until after the midterm elections.’

You claimed that ‘more than 3 million young adults have gained insurance’ by staying on their parents’ plan. Even if that were true, it seems to take for granted that there’s anything remotely positive about the government forcing insurance companies to treat 25-year-old men and women like children. But, more importantly, it isn’t.

Indeed, when you said ‘more than 3 million,’ you really meant ‘extrapolations based on faulty estimates conjured up by Health and Human Services almost two years ago have brought us to the dubious conclusion that we can claim 3 million, because nobody will understand how we arrived at that figure, and most everyone will be too lazy to even attempt to check our numbers.’

You appeared to venture into the vicinity of truth when you stated that Obamacare is‘doing what it’s supposed to do,‘ but then you forgot to stipulate what, precisely, that happens to be.

It has not, nor was it meant to, make insurance cheaper and more accessible – but it has stripped away choice and freedom, and made more people dependent on the government...

I know that was a big excerpt, but you do want to read the rest.  Thanks to PJ for bringing this to my attention.

Is Obamacare too big to fail?

When Obamacare's first open-enrollment period ended last week, the tally was impressive: 7.1 million Americans signed up for insurance on federal and state exchanges by the March 31 deadline, several million more signed up for Medicaid and a whole lot of under-26 Americans got covered by their parents' plans.

Those numbers represent a significant political victory for Democrats, making it highly unlikely that Republicans will be able to deliver on their promise to repeal the law.

"You're not going to turn away 7 or 10 million people from insurance coverage," crowed Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. "Doesn't work anymore."

Proving the Ted Cruz was right

That doesn't mean Obamacare is guaranteed to succeed. The program still faces a series of difficult tests — most important, keeping costs under control so insurance premiums don't soar in coming years.

And the program is certain not to be universally popular with its participants. Just think: Millions of newcomers to health coverage are about to join the rest of us in those frustrating battles with insurers.

Being a democratic news outlet, of course, this has to end with an appeal to mend it, not end it.

But regarding the original question: No, Quite the opposite, it's very size and complexity means Obamacare is bound to fail in many aspects.  However, failure is, unfortunately, slow to manifest, and widely tolerated in American politics, as even as a program fails to deliver on the promise of solving the problem it was sold as solving, it feeds a constituency with a strong incentive to preserve it.

Case in point: GOP seeks coverage choices in health law they hate

At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama's health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.
"Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman," said

Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

No member of the House GOP leadership has publicly hailed the fix, which was tucked, at Republicans' request, into legislation preventing a cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

It is unclear how many members of the House rank and file knew of it because the legislation was passed by a highly unusual voice vote without debate.

Several lobbyists and Republican aides who monitored the issue said the provision reflects a calculation that no matter how hard the party tries, the earliest the law can be repealed is after Obama leaves office in 2017. In the meantime, according to this line of thinking, small-business owners need all the flexibility that can get to comply with it.

That which cannot be abolished (at least immediately) must be changed to be less obnoxious.  But in the long run, that just makes the big changes more difficult to achieve later.