Grendel
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2005
- Messages
- 704
- Reaction score
- 298
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Liberal
None of the above.
Obamacare was designed to fail intentionally. The whole thing was supposed to have an option to allow the government to seize control of healthcare but it got cut out. However, they continued with the rest, knowing it would fail, in order to re-address socialized medicine later with a better chance of getting it through. So, no need to blame anyone when it is working as designed.
Although this is a bit hysterical, I'm not sure there isn't a grain of truth in it. The DNC couldn't push through the whole package, including single payer, so they went along with a fractional package. It seemed kind of pointless to me, when they did it, but it's not unlikely that they are planning to do partial implementation, because that's all they could get at the time, and then re-float single payer once people are on it and used to it. I think the single-payer modification will to through easily in a couple of years.
As for the original question, like others have said, it's too late to start grinding the tombstone for OC. Most of the predictions of certain doom are based on either hysteria about death panels, or on the bad interface, but the whole system is a hell of a lot more than just a web-interface. If the Democrats get the bugs worked out of this by November of 2014, it will be a sweep in the midterms. And they have until 2016 to get it worked out enough to use against Republicans in the next Presidential contest.
If they're able to get the systems smooth enough by those dates, the Republicans will be left holding a bag full of hysterical quotes about how America will end and there will be a government genocide if the law passes, and they'll never be able to recover their image.
If they can't get the bugs worked out by then, it will hurt the Democrats pretty badly. Not as much as the rightwingers think it will, though. After all, in 2008 people voted for health care reform. So far, only the Democrats have even made an attempt. All the GOP has offered was bitching and moaning. It won't hurt the DNC as much as the right-wing thinks it will, because a lot of voters will by sympathetic to the attempt to fix the problem, and even failure may translate into election material for the Democrats. "We're trying to fix the health care mess and the Republicans won't let us," in short. Just a question of how much such a message will resonate with the undecideds. Probably not as much as the DNC would hope for, but far better than the RNC expects.
But again, we have to see how well they can fix the bugs, whether or not they can use it as leverage for single-payer, and whether or not the voters are sympathetic enough to vote for the ones who at least tried, instead of the ones who did things like shut down the government as a protest against the attempt.