The voters who vaulted both Barack Obama and Harry Reid to power and national office are seeing what must be shocking headlines today. On Thursday, the president offered an apology and an unworkable and possibly illegal “fix” to his troubled healthcare law. Today, the Chicago Tribune has had enough and wants the president’s signature law repealed.
In an editorial titled “Stop Digging. Demolish Obamacare” or “Stop Digging. Start Over,” the Chicago Tribune rips into Obama’s signature law.
For perhaps 5 million of those Americans thus far — estimates vary — the Washington-ordered cancellation of their policies is especially maddening. In the past these people took responsibility for their coverage and bought policies that balanced their needs, finances and personal choices. Congress and President Barack Obama, by enacting the Affordable Care Act, in effect ordered insurers to dismantle many of those individual plans — and cancel those policies.
The Americans manhandled by this exercise in government arrogance now find themselves divided into warring tribes: Those with chronic ailments who have found new plans on Obamacare exchanges and are pleased. Those who don’t want or can’t afford the replacement policies Obamacare offers them. Those whose new policies block them from using the health providers who have treated them for many years. The estimated 23 million to 41 million people whose employer-sponsored plans are the next to be imperiled. And on and on.
Most of these tribespeople only wish their big problem was a slipshod Obamacare website. On Thursday, their plight grew more frightful. With even Democratic members of Congress storming the White House over the cancellations, Obama declared — by what legal authority is unclear — that he would overrule the law he signed in 2010 and allow insurers to extend those canceled policies for a year.
The Tribune concludes that Congress should repeal Obamacare: “Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that ‘we fumbled the rollout of this health care law’ would have been pleased to hear him add: So we’re admitting it. This law is a bust. We’re starting over.”
The Tribune is joined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Published in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state, the LVRV also calls for Obamacare, which Reid shepherded through the Senate on its way to passage, to be dismantled in an incisive editorial titled “Obamacare woes beg for repeal.”
We’ve all heard the saying, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” In the case of the Affordable Care Act, it’s going to get worse before it gets worse still. Millions of people are learning they can’t keep their current individual plans, tens of millions more could be in the same boat at this time next year when the law’s employer mandate kicks in, and hardly anyone is buying expensive Obamacare-compliant policies.
Now President Barack Obama is trying to put the genie back in the bottle. He held a tedious Thursday news conference to announce that he’s directing insurance companies to allow those millions who have lost coverage the option to renew their old policies for one more year. This is yet another executive mandate that overrides the oft-repeated talking point from Obamacare supporters that the Affordable Care Act is “settled law” and “the law of the land.” It sure is, except when it’s expedient to delay the parts that are politically problematic — and there are many such parts.
It concludes:
The law is so deeply flawed, with so many components in direct conflict with one another, that tweaking just one part will accelerate its collapse.
The Obamacare debacle is just getting started — and it only gets worse from here. Repeal and replace.
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