Last night, after a gathering of politios here in Washington, a prominent writer and authority on health care detailed for me the tremendous gloom among Capitol Hill Republicans and conservatives about Obamacare in recent days.<\/p>\n
The just-announce full-year postponement in implementing the employer mandate was not an admission of failure, I was told, but an application of strategic delay.\u00a0\u00a0The idea was to put off some of the most objectionable parts of the law while aggressively signing people up.\u00a0\u00a0Remember, this insider went on, most of the people Obamacare targets have health insurance now.\u00a0\u00a0By luring them into the program, the administration gets them to surrender their current coverage.\u00a0\u00a0That way, when, after the 2014 midterm elections, the employer mandate starts to bite and calls for repeal become more urgent, these millions will be locked into the president\u2019s system without a safety net.\u00a0\u00a0They will become a core constituency for blocking repeal.\u00a0\u00a0There is nothing that can be done to stop this.<\/p>\n
The unilateral suspension of the employer mandate has Republicans particularly shocked and depressed.\u00a0\u00a0A president can\u2019t just suspend a law, they say.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s government by decree.\u00a0\u00a0But it turns out that, in its thousands of pages, the Affordable Care Act included a provision allowing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to suspend provisions that appeared unworkable and recast the program at will.<\/p>\n
By the way, if all this sounds familiar to you, it may be that you heard Rush Limbaugh take a similar same line on his show yesterday \u2013 or caught a Fox News clip of him, as I did when I got home last night.\u00a0\u00a0Limbaugh\u2019s sources and mine may be the same.<\/p>\n
But it turns out that there is another view circulating in conservative circles.\u00a0\u00a0It is that, instead of shying away from Obamacare as an issue, Republicans should be doubling down on it.\u00a0\u00a0The big GOP failure in the last presidential campaign, these advocates argue, was that we had a presidential candidate who could not argue in any coherent fashion against Obamacare at all.\u00a0\u00a0Since November, where our candidates have sounded a clear trumpet of opposition, they have won.\u00a0\u00a0Where their trumpet has been uncertain or silent, they have lost.<\/p>\n
I share this last second view.\u00a0\u00a0There is tremendous public opposition to Obamacare \u2013 and for good reason.<\/p>\n
It is not just that, as the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0editorial page reported this morning, \u201cthe unfortunate government official charged with designing [the president\u2019s much touted online insurance exchange] declared in March that his team had given up on creating \u2018a world-class user experience,\u2019 adding, \u2018Let\u2019s just make sure it\u2019s not a third-world user experience.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Senator Max Baucus\u2019s prediction of an Obamacare \u201ctrain wreck\u201d comes to life.<\/p>\n
It is also that, and polling confirms this, American voters feel that the entire program is becoming a way of dispensing favors to insiders.\u00a0\u00a0Some groups get waivers.\u00a0\u00a0Some don\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0Some are hit with taxes.\u00a0\u00a0Taxes are set aside for others.\u00a0\u00a0By administration policy, there will be no one looking to see if people who sign up for benefits are actually qualified.\u00a0\u00a0We were promised fairness.\u00a0\u00a0We are getting cronyism.<\/p>\n
But then, of course, how could it be different?\u00a0\u00a0Isn\u2019t this what happens when Congress passes thousand-plus page bills no one has read?\u00a0\u00a0Or perhaps someone did read it, and government by decree \u2013 and a stealth path to a single payer system \u2013 was exactly what they intended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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