President Obama’s health care law was designed with a number of components that were inextricably linked. Ideally, it was supposed to function like a precision watch, with each individual part doing its job to make the whole work properly. But a month into its first open enrollment period, deep design flaws have been exposed, threatening the viability of Obamacare.
Obama set out to expand insurance coverage to Americans with lower-incomes, as well as those shut out of the individual markets as a result of pre-existing conditions. Doing so required forcing individuals to purchase insurance so that enough young and healthy people could be lured into the system to offset the costs of covering older and sicker Americans with higher medical expenses.
