President Out of Touch on Obamacare

The president’s signature legislative accomplishment is, of course, facing a Supreme Court challenge and the possibility that it could be invalidated over what he, and others, consider a drafting error.  But the president’s beef now is not with the court but with:

To the president:

The arguments over just how successful the bill is, or is not, and whether the president has delivered on the promises he made for it – keep your doctor, save $2,500, etc. – go on ceaselessly and nobody seems to give.  But there is this fact, which might account for the president’s pique … Obamacare has never been more unpopular than it is on the day he makes his passionate defense.

As Peyton M. Craighill of the Washington Post reports:

It seems likely that no government health care plan that is anything less than single-payer (otherwise known as “free health care”) will ever poll well.  Health care is expensive and nobody likes needing it or having to pay for it. Everybody wants the best care possible and cannot imagine being denied it over something as trivial as costs. Which continue to rise, with the insurance companies in several states looking for double digit rate increases as people previously uninsured – and uninsurable –  are running up costs and healthy people are not signing up in the numbers necessary to keep things solvent.

Health care is the challenge the political system is least capable of solving.  The president’s frustrations are understandable and, in large degree, of his own making.

But had he said, Many of you will not be able to stay with your doctor and many of you will lose your current health care plan and, perhaps, be shuttled over to Medicaid.  This is a work in progress and even under the best possible outcome, many of you will not be happy.  We’ll do the best we can but modern health care is expensive and somebody is going to have to pay and some people are going to get less than they believe they should and even less than they need. 

Down on the law; up on the subsidies.  Call it the health care paradox.