Spike Dolomite Ward’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times has been getting a fair amount of attention.  Ward, a private citizen and an on-again, off-again supporter of President Obama and his party, is now thankful for Obama because Obamacare helped her get health coverage for cancer when she didn’t have insurance. Her basic argument seems to be as follows:  At $2.5 trillion over its real first decade (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and at an indeterminable cost to Americans’ liberty, Obamacare is nevertheless worth keeping because — as her own experience suggests — it would occasionally help someone.

Specifically, Ward praises Obamacare’s community (“high-risk”) pools for those with prohibitively expensive preexisting conditions, like herself.  These are the same pools that 375,000 people were supposed to have signed up for by January 1, 2011, based on the Medicare chief actuary’s projections.  Instead, by that date, only 8,000 people had signed up — or 1 for every 47 that were expected.  As of October 1, enrollment had still reached only 10 percent of the projected enrollment for nine months earlier.  Why haven’t more people signed up?  Because, as I’ve written previously.