Spiking the Ball Again

Jonathan Tobin

"Two weeks after he first claimed victory after the ObamaCare enrollment deadline, President Obama was spiking the ball again as he demanded that Republicans stop trying to overturn his signature health-care law in an impromptu press conference. The excuse for the president’s appearance in front of the White House press corps today was the claim that the number of those enrolled in the plan has now exceeded eight million. That figure was, he said, enough to not only stop Democrats from seeking to avoid blame for their responsibility in foisting the unpopular law on an unwilling public but also to effectively silence its many vocal critics:

"I think we can agree that it is well past time to move on, as a country…The point is, this debate is and should be over. The Affordable Care Act is working. The American people don’t want us re-fighting the battles of the past five years."

"But the assumption that the government’s successful efforts to pressure or persuade several million people to sign up for ObamaCare means that it is “working” is completely unwarranted. It’s not just that the figures put forward by the administration are unreliable for a number of reasons. Even if we assumed that there really were eight million ObamaCare policyholders, the real test of this law’s viability and its ability to endure has yet to come. Not until we see just how many of those signed up are young and healthy enough to help pay for the vast number of sick and elderly covered by it will we know if it can pay for itself. And it won’t be until next year when the employer mandate and many other more painful provisions of the law are finally implemented that it will be clear whether the entire scheme can survive and how much damage it will inflict on the economy....."

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