Republicans believed a Mitt Romney win would seal Obamacare's fate. Democrats - or rather, the lonely two-fifths of Americans who support the president's beleaguered healthcare law - believed an Obama win would secure its future. Both sides were kidding themselves.
Romney may have pledged to repeal the law, but his positions on Obamacare had the life span of a rainbow. He supported an identical law when he got the credit for signing it as governor of Massachusetts. He then opposed Obamacare when that's what GOP primary voters wanted to hear, and later endorsed parts of it when he thought that's what moderate voters wanted to hear. Anyone who put stock in Romney's pledge to fight for repeal simply wasn't paying attention.
Democrats are likewise deluding themselves if they think the law is safe because Obama wields the veto pen. The greatest threat to Obamacare was never a Romney presidency but Obamacare itself.
The law remains vulnerable because of its unpopularity, the compromises that unpopularity forced on its authors and the Supreme Court's ruling that part of it is unconstitutional. These factors guarantee repeal will remain a viable issue, and - I predict - that the president will ultimately sign a bill making major changes, at the very least.
In its ruling on the healthcare law, the Supreme Court gave states the freedom to decline Obamacare's costly Medicaid expansion. ..... The fact that many states have said they won't implement the expansion will lead to those groups putting pressure on Congress to reopen the law. < snip >
..... Obamacare is unpopular, unsustainable and vulnerable for the same reasons it always has been. It imposes too many costs on too many people and makes healthcare more costly and scarce, not less. It needs to go. That can still happen. .....
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.latimes.com ...
The takeaways:
** More than 30 states either have refused to establish the exchanges or are on the way to do so, because there is no benefit in state-created exchange since all exchanges will be controlled by Washington, and there is no constitutionally legal penalty for state not creating the exchange and leaving it to Washington spending the money on more expensive one.
** Also, the IRS cannot legally impose the "penalty tax" in states that didn't "create" the exchanges - this will be litigated and go to SCOTUS again, and if any of the "enforcement mechanisms" fails, the program will be dead of its own weight because enough employers will leave the "Obamacare states" to make it impossible for states to finance. The incentives and subsidies are there only to hide the true costs of the program, but they will be self-evident and subject to "unequal treatment under the law" lawsuits.
** Congress cannot demand that states must create and implement federal program, relying on incentives instead - which may be unconstitutional and don't really offset the costs of the program, with premiums rising significantly, even with subsidies (which are unfunded).
A great companion piece is a must-read author's earlier work, posted in NRO: Obamacare Is Still Vulnerable - NRO, by Michael F. Cannon, 2012 November 09
Selection of Mitt Romney by GOPe as an "electable and credible" Republican "leader" was the obvious "loser pick" in this election cycle and one of the worst ever, and it only served to stop the discussion of and campaigning against the multitude of problems in the still very unpopular ObamaCare - since Romney was the owner of the near-identical RomneyCare in MA, his only objection could be that it was "good for Massachusets" but "not good enough" for the federal government - how is that for a loser argument!
Now, if Republicans are finally ready to ditch Romney as a costly mistake (whose only chance to win was the dreadful record and politics of Obama, because he himself had nothing to offer) and stop making excuses for his "rich white uncaring do-nothing Republicans" campaign "legacy," they can get down to business of dismantling ObamaCare and with it the Democratic machine, piece by piece.
Dems lost in 2004, with John F. Kerry (near-exact Massachusetts clone of Romney, only with "D" after his name) and had nothing to show, not even having control of the House or Senate, yet they learned their mistakes and in 2006 they controlled both and were on the way to greatly expanding it in 2008.
It's a mess Obama and Democrats created on their own, so let's make sure they own it.
