Yes, President Obama faces a major political problem explaining his promise, now proven false, that if Americans like their current health coverage, they can keep it. But beginning next year, as Obamacare truly becomes a fact of American life, the president may have an even bigger problem: reconciling his pledge to make the health care system “better for everybody” on the one hand, with the redistributive nature of Obamacare on the other.

Obama often promised that his national health care scheme would benefit all. “What we will do is make insurance work better for everybody,” he told the Congressional Black Caucus at a dinner in September 2009, as lawmakers were considering what would become the Affordable Care Act. A couple of months earlier, Obama told CBS his proposal would “make the system work better for everybody.” Two years later, in 2011, Obama promised the law “will save everybody money.”