In case you ever wondered
what happens when you spend too much time in the Fox News Bubble of Death, you end up with stuff like this:
The politics are on the GOP’s side in the Obamacare debate, and, happily, the policy is, too: It is an extremely poor piece of legislation, poorly implemented by federal bureaucracies that range from the incompetent to the hostile. It has not yet even been established that the law will withstand court challenges on several fronts, including its plain violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Obama administration’s entirely unauthorized decision — in clear violation of the letter of the Affordable Care Act itself — to extend ACA subsidies and penalties into states that have not created exchanges. The average age of those signing up for Obamacare is older than the administration’s stated goal, meaning that there are fewer younger and healthier people paying into the system to offset the higher costs of the older and presumably less healthy beneficiaries. Obamacare achieves half of its new coverage simply by shunting people into Medicaid, a defective, expensive, and unsustainable program.
That's not some conservative crank, that's the editors of the National Review, so a gaggle of conservative cranks. And literally every sentence of that paragraph is wrong.
1) The politics are on the GOP's side
Don't look for evidence for that assertion, because none is given. Repeal currently polls in the 20s in every poll that has tested the issue in the past ... forever. And while the law isn't popular, its approval numbers are on an upward trajectory. All of that despite the efforts of the entire might of the conservative movement to discredit it.
More below the fold.
2) The law was poorly implemented
That was true last October. Now? The law has exceeded its 7 million target by a cool mil, and processed, what, a million signups in its final week? Insane. Roll out might've sucked, but implementation has been impressive.
3) It hasn't survived court challenges!
Jesus, for a crowd that rails about activist judges, they're still holding out hope that judges will veto the will of the legislature and president. No such luck. And even if the contraception mandate were to be struck down, that would hardly be a death knell for the law. It would mean that a bunch of asshole bosses would meddle with people's private lives. The vast majority won't. And this is what conservatives are pinning their hopes on these days?
4) Not enough young people signing up
Twenty-eight percent of enrollees are in that coveted 19-34 bracket, enough to guarantee the success of the law. And that's not liberal spin. That's straight from the mouth of the insurance industry.
5) Obamacare achieves half of its new coverage simply by shunting people into Medicaid
That's a feature, not a bug. The point was to insure the uninsured, and most were uninsured because of economic reasons.
The strategy of Democrats since Obamacare’s passage has been to declare the law a fait acompli that it is futile to resist. The predicate for its eventual repeal is Republicans’ rejecting this argument, and fighting on.
Oh, no one expects anything less. Problem for conservatives, the law
is a fait accompli, ratified by President Barack Obama's reelection in 2012. Everything since has been one conservative temper tantrum after another, yet despite their best efforts and tens (if not hundreds) of millions of Koch dollars, the law is only becoming more entrenched and more popular. And it's doing what it's supposed to be doing—saving lives. Even
conservative lives.
And each one of those feel-good stories is just another nail in the GOP's coffin. Because the alternative to the law saving someone's life is that person dying. And that's exactly what the GOP alternative would deliver.