Why Obamacare Will Make Its Numbers

Despite its rollout problems I think that it’s probable that Obamacare blasts past its goal of 7 million enrollees in its first year. I’ll give you two reasons this is going to happen.

1. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the AP and IRS scandals, Syria, and the NSA. Remember all of those scandals? Of course you do and you also probably recognize that nothing, zip, nada has stuck to this President as a result of those incidents. He and his inner ring are masters of waiting out the storm, they have hides as thick as a rhinoceros and they know how to let their allies fulminate in order to show the world that they’re serious about propriety and then reel them back into line. The spin takes over and becomes the reality, the problem is left for talk radio hosts to fulminate over, life goes on.That’s the script they’re following. Take the arrows and wait. The website will be up and functioning to some degree by the end of November, the holidays will divert attention and by February or March they’ll be able to claim success as the number of participants will be beyond what they hoped for because…
2. The wholesale cancellation of individual insurance policies was always their ace in the hole. It was impossible to know how many uninsured would sign up for Obamacare but it wasn’t hard to figure out that if you engineered the cancellation of insurance coverage for a large number of people who had insurance you would probably get most of them into your program given it was the only game in town. These people are used to having insurance, many probably use it and need it and, even if they don’t, feel naked going uninsured. They may bitch, scream and stomp their feet but they will enroll. Presto, you have your number – no you blast through your number.

Regardless of what the President meant when he said that everyone could keep their insurance, period, the fact is that the plan was devised from the outset to force the wholesale cancellation of existing insurance policies. This is where the assured market existed and the architects of the law knew that full well. However lame and amateurish the implementation of the website has been, the law was  carefully crafted for success. The website will get fixed, people will sign up in droves and this affair will simply be another entry in the list I cited above. As an opponent I can only tip my hat to those devious folks who put it together and congratulate them on playing a brilliant game. That game, by the way, is over. Get used to it.