Republicans are absolutely gleeful at the opportunity to start a new round of
Obamacare bashing with the
resignation of Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said she had an “impossible” job — defending Obamacare. “I thank Secretary Sebelius for her service. She had an impossible task: nobody can make Obamacare work,” he quickly tweeted. […]
“Secretary Sebelius may be gone, but the problems with this law and the impact it’s having on our constituents aren’t. Obamacare has to go too,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. […]
Sen. Lamar Alexander said the burden of defending the health care law now falls on Sebelius’s successor.
“This is the right decision,” Alexander said. “The challenge for Ms. Burwell, or any other successor, is to help Congress find the right way to repair the damage Obamacare has done to American families.”
Gosh, you'd think Republicans had no idea that Obamacare had just created more than 7.5 million new private insurance accounts, on top of the millions more who have coverage through Medicaid and expanded family plans. They remain determined to deny the fact that the law, under Sebelius, exceeded the CBO's and administration's enrollment goals. They have to, because the only way they can keep demanding that the only answer is repeal is to keep saying—despite all evidence that says otherwise—that the law simply cannot work.
They'll use the confirmation hearings of Sylvia Mathews Burwell, currently director of the Office of Management and Budget and President Obama's choice for Sebelius's replacement, to keep on insisting that there's no way this law can work. But by then, the numbers of new enrollments will be even higher, because they just keep rolling in.
Meanwhile, we're still waiting for that Republican replacement plan, that magical unicorn of a plan that will do all of the great things Obamacare does without being Obamacare. They still can't tell us what they'll do besides take coverage away from the millions of people who now, finally, have it.