Is Obamacare going to survive?

A remarkable thing has happened in Washington DC in the past few days.

By rights, the Republicans, who stupidly closed down the government for 17 days in early October, should be in disarray.

The GOP led a campaign based on the opinions of one half of one third of the branches of government and it failed.

Recently one of the leaders of the campaign, Ted Cruz, said that he didn’t regret his actions, even though 80% of respondents in a CNN poll said it had harmed the country.

The Republicans should be scared and worried about their approval ratings.

But they aren’t, and it is all because of the policy they were seeking to bring down - ‘Obamacare’, the President’s attempt to introduce health insurance for every American citizen.

The arguments for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (its proper name!) are well worn, as are the ideas against it, whether it be enforced stealing from the rich, a Trojan horse for socialism or something that will lead to ‘death panels’ in US hospitals.

Overall I supported Obamacare, even if it was pork-barrelled to the max and had some glaring holes in it.

However, the policy is now struggling, as is the President who proposed it, after it emerged that voters were misled over their current insurance at its introduction.

Initially the fault with Obamacare was the website – it didn’t work and the number of signups was too low, with only 107,000 people having signed up at a point that half a million subscriptions were expected.

Now, however, there is a much bigger problem.

Obama is on record 29 times denying that people would have to cancel their current medical insurance if the ACA was passed – “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”

Now however there is a growing realisation that this isn’t true and that White House insiders knew this at the time.

However the President himself has yet to acknowledge this publicly, so far only acknowledging the failures of the website.

The fallout from this could be enormous as tens of millions of Americans could lose their insurance plans because they do not meet the requirements laid out in ACA.

House Democrats who helped pass Obamacare, which didn’t receive a single GOP vote of support, are now worried about their political futures.

Some are even changing their tack, with 39 Democratic Congressmen supporting a GOP bill to extend ACA into perpetuity, in effect cancelling the plan (something which Obama will veto if need be).

Obama’s approval rating is now at 39% and 55% of Americans think their President lied to them about his flagship healthcare plan.

As he enters his lame duck period but desperately tries to establish a legacy, Obama’s hopes could be dashed if these issues aren’t sorted out soon.

I sincerely hope the policy gets saved, but only in a way that helps the health of the American people, whoever's political career may suffer as a result. 

Debate warmly encouraged.