Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Obamacare

But at this point there’s enough information coming in to make semi-educated guesses — and it looks to me as if this thing is probably going to stumble through to the finish line. State-run enrollments are mostly going pretty well; Medicaid expansion is going very well (and it’s expanding even in states that have rejected the expansion, because more people are learning they’re eligible.) And healthcare.gov, while still pretty bad, is starting to look as if it will be good enough in a few weeks for large numbers of people to sign up, either through the exchanges or directly with insurers.

If all this is right, by the time open enrollment ends in March, millions of previously uninsured Americans will in fact have received coverage under the law, and reform will be irreversible. Obama personally may never recover his reputation; Democratic hopes of a wave election in 2014 are probably gone, although you never know. But anyone counting on Obamacare to collapse is probably making a very bad bet.
People's memories are short. If it's fixed by the spring people will have all summer to forget. The Republicans probably won't want to change the subject to shutting down the government again.

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