Democrats Fear Obamacare Election Disaster

Semi-News/Semi-Satire ^ | 1 Nov 2013 | John Semmens

The problems with the Obamacare website, the waves of policy cancellations, and the ensuing “sticker shock” of higher insurance premiums for conforming Affordable Care Act plans has Democrats facing reelection in 2014 in a state of high anxiety.
“I'm seeing a lot of sympathy for the poor schmucks that can't log onto the website or are getting cancellation notices,” Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) observed. “I don't see anyone showing much concern about how this will affect us next November. I didn't muck up the website. I didn't send out any cancellation notices. But it looks like voters could take out their anger on me. How is that fair?”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) was similarly concerned. “We trusted the President and Secretary Sebelius to do this thing right,” Shaheen remembered. “We didn't poke or pry into the process. We didn't even read the bill before we passed it. We had total faith they'd handle it. Now that everything is falling apart the President is saying that no one told him it was a mess. That may be well and good for him, but we're the ones exposed to voter retaliation next year. What's he going to do about that?”
Investment guru and Obama supporter Warren Buffett advised the President to “blow the whole thing up and start over. With a reported 500 million lines of code behind the website there's no way to rescue this monster. The President has already used his discretion to exempt employers and unions from complying with the new regulations. He should just exempt everyone else until a completely new system is developed and tested.”
Whether Buffett's suggestion is feasible is dubious. On the one hand, the exemptions the President has been handing out conflict with the contents of the Affordable Care Act and are clearly illegal. On the other hand, issuing more exemptions will still leave the damage already done by the law unaffected. Since Obama seems determined to impose his vision of health care on largely unwilling consumers, any so-called new system that meets with his approval would inevitably repeat the errors that plague the current fiasco.