A hard road ahead for ObamaCare, and America

In response to Laszewski: ‘Obamacare is Finished’ Unless White House Acts Now:

I’ll say this much for ObamaCare: it’s already survived catastrophic failures that should have filled the streets of Washington with pitchforks and torches.  It really help that the media undersells everything that goes wrong, and helps Team Obama get away with their standard “one news cycle at a time” spin strategy.  The Obamanoids are free to say any insane thing it takes to squeeze out a few days of improved coverage; reporters who know better cheerfully relay their lies with minimal real-time criticism.  

A week ago, we were told there was no way the ObamaCare deadlines would be moved – why, the Administration didn’t even have the statutory authority to do it!  That was good enough for the media to let Team Obama run a few days of B.S. advertising about the countdown to March 31, and scare a few more kids into singing up for this ripoff, before the old talking points turned to dust and blew away.

But I think Laszewski is on to something here: there’s just no way this train wreck can lumber any further if those already agonizing insurance premiums double or triple.  And that will cap off a year of bad news in which people start paying the trans-Constitutional individual mandate tax/penalty (look how badly the White House and its lapdogs freaked out when Matt Drudge talked about cutting the first check to pay his “liberty tax”), the employer market starts crumbling beneath the oncoming storm of Obama’s Big Lie, horror stories about “doc shock” and bureaucratic ineptitude keep piling up, and the fiscal death spiral begins.  Maybe we’ll have a few headlines about the insurance industry bailout to add to the pile by Christmas.  

There is no way to “fix” ObamaCare, however.  Laszewski’s idea for loosening up on the mandates would help a bit, but it’s probably a non-starter with the Administration; King Barack I is not going to admit his mandates were idiotic ideas.  He’s invested a lot of political energy in protecting them – it would snap back into his face like a giant rubber band.  Republicans would have a field day replaying video clips of Obama and his flunkies adamantly standing by the mandates he just abandoned.  Even the lower-information voters would begin wondering what the point of the whole ObamaCare exercise was. 

Ego isn’t the only reason the Obamanoids keep trying to portray the ACA as a great idea everybody’s going to fall in love with.  They know they’re in deep trouble when the public sees them acting like it’s a disaster they’re fighting to salvage.  That’s already the impression created by all of Obama’s delays and waivers; abandoning his mandates will make it look like he’s sealing bulkheads to keep a sinking ship afloat.  

Besides, the point of ObamaCare is not to “offer choices,” it is to impose commands.  Like all socialist schemes, it doesn’t work very well when too many people climb over the walls and escape.  It certainly isn’t going to fulfill its secret purpose of destroying private health care and paving the way for the eternal darkness of single-payer if meaningful competition with the Affordable Care Act is possible on an extended basis.