Obamacare’s drip-fed success
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5f3d003a-5a98-11e4-8625-00144feab7de.html#axzz3HJA0VfdpUntil recently it was seen as the political equivalent of Ebola. Yet President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act – known to friend and foe alike as Obamacare – is rapidly settling into America’s landscape. In politics, its virulence is receding: Republicans are far more muted in their attacks than anyone expected a few months ago. The outcome to next week’s midterm US elections will not hinge on the public’s ambivalence about the law. On the ground, its impact is spreading like an inkblot. Obamacare is messy and ugly. But it is starting to cover the map.
For US conservatives, Mr Obama’s most cherished feat still stands for government over-reach at its worst. That is also what Ronald Reagan, the then governor of California, thought of Medicare, the generous public health system for America’s seniors passed by Lyndon Johnson in 1965. Today Reagan’s heirs are some of Medicare’s most militant defenders. In politics, as in law, possession is nine-tenths of the game. The longer Obamacare stays in existence, the harder it will be to repeal.
Obamacare will probably collapse on its own as it cannot be fully implemented.
