Why Obamacare can't be saved

Obamacare, the cornerstone of President Obama’s legislative agenda, is quickly becoming the epic failure of his legacy.

As the reality of the debacle of his health care plan becomes clearer to the American public, and millions of Americans are being displaced from perfectly good health insurance, I wonder, why did the administration think this was a good idea? This law does nothing to improve access to health care.

As of Nov. 13, just 106,000 people had signed up for private health insurance through the federal and state websites. Of those, only 26,794 signed up through the severely flawed federal site, healthcare.gov, that operates the online marketplace for 36 states. That’s just a fraction of the 500,000 enrollments the administration had projected for the first month of operation.

Of the numbers, House Speaker John Boehner said, “This report is a symbol of the failure of the president’s health care law.” Republicans are not alone in bashing Obamacare’s launch; 39 Democrats in the House voted with them to allow people to keep their current plans.

Even President Clinton joined the critics, advising Obama and the Democratic caucus that they should live up to their promise and allow Americans who like their current health insurance plans to keep them.

Millions of young, healthy consumers have had their current coverage canceled by insurance companies as a result of Obamacare. This throws off the whole dynamic of the program. In order for health insurance to be successful, there must be as many healthy consumers as non-healthy so that the program is balanced. If this doesn’t happen, the risk of adverse selection becomes prevalent, which would induce a death spiral and the failure of many insurance companies.

What Obama and his know-it-all administration forgot to factor in was young people’s blasé attitude about health insurance and their unwillingness to pay for it. Many young Americans would rather pay the meager fine for not having insurance or avoid it altogether and then play a “catch me if you can” game with the IRS.