Boohoo. Pass a hanky to National Journal’s Ron Fournier who is now moaning about why he’s “getting sick of defending Obamacare.” He writes:
The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—“If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health plan.” And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.
Hey, how about…journalists should have known it was false, too? Reporters who might have done some actual reporting on the law and its regulations instead of breathless stories about this Republican attack or that conservative canard (such as “you won’t really be able to keep your health plan, guys and gals, the way the president keeps saying you will.”). How about you, Mr. Fournier, doing a journalist’s job? Even opinion writers are known to look for facts to back up their points of view.
Instead, you were among the cheerleaders. And you’re still making excuses, still willing to give the White House a pass on executive actions, even as you express your disappointment:
Put me in the frustrated category. I want the ACA to work because I want health insurance provided to the millions without it, for both the moral and economic benefits. I want the ACA to work because, as Charles Lane wrote for The Washington Post, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken. I want the ACA to work because the GOP has not offered a serious alternative that can pass Congress.
Unfortunately, the president and his team are making their good intentions almost indefensible.
The key word in that sentence: “almost.” Clearly, Mr. Fournier has yet to give up his addiction to the Democratic lie: that somehow, one can make health care affordable and still insure millions more. The lie is in the law’s very name.
His frustration isn’t with the president, then. It’s with his own inability to calculate.
