Is Obamacare Worth Saving?

 Don't think Obama is taking the historically crappy rollout of his signature legislation seriously? How about this for an opener: The Insurance Commissioner for the District of Columbia, was fired by DC's mayor. Why? Because he said that Obama's "fix" of Obamacare is going to do nothing but screw up the entire insurance industry and he didn't want to have anything to do with the "fix".

In the end analysis, Obama has three choices and none of them are very appealing to him. First, he can try to ride out the storm, which is what he'll probably do. It'll be a terrible mistake filled with problems, but he'll be able to stick to his guns. Kinda like the captain of a ship, who's lost most of his crew to a sinking, but is determined to save the ship. The problem with this approach is that the problems Obamacare are facing are just going to mount. No amount of administration "fixes" are going to help. See, somewhere up the road, someone is going to get smart and take the whole thing to the Supreme Court saying Obama has overstepped his jurisdiction. Only Congress can write and change laws. What Obama is doing is really unconstitutional and he's opening himself up to even more problems if it goes before a judge somewhere (or the Supreme Court) and he loses. That's like that sinking ship taking a direct torpedo hit.

The second choice is to punt. If Obama decides he wants to try and save Congress, he needs to get Obamacare of the table as fast as humanly possible. Otherwise the GOP will widen it's hold in the house and most likely take over the Senate. Remember, there is only a five seat difference, and there are 14 senators up for re-election that are deemed very vulnerable. If all of those seats were to fall, which isn't likely, it would give the GOP a 9 seat majority in the senate...just 8 votes short of a veto-proof majority. This option is actually Obama's best choice. He may never be facing another election, but if his party doesn't bode well in 2014, there won't be an Obama legacy. And 2016, even if Hillary gets the nod, becomes a GOP possibility. Hell, I could probably run against Hillary in that scenario and win.

The last choice Obama has is to allow Congress to try and "fix" Obamacare like they are inevitably going to do. The problem here is that there are going to be a lot of Republicans licking their chops to get some of their changes through. Things like opening up the exchanges to selling across state lines, and tort reform. Both of which are strongly opposed by the Dems because of the high volume of donations they get from special interest groups.

Let's face it. None of these options is very good if you're Obama and all you have to hang your entire presidency on is this law. It's been a trainwreck from the beginning, and that's just the start. If it continues into next year, you're going to see sticker shock hit new levels. People aren't only going to balk at signing up because of the premiums. They are going to balk at the co-pays (sometimes up two or three times over what people are used to paying), and deductables that go up two or three times. Then you're going to see the people really start bitching. And Obama, who has already started calling the insurance companies the bad guys for HIS broken promise, is going to look like the four year old kid who's mother won't buy him a candy bar in the supermarket.

What's a president to do? Well, he could have listened to the GOP in the first place. Would have made it a whole lot easier. The GOP may not be good at governing in Washington, but their powers of looking into the future are really pretty amazing!