Health Reform: Kill the Beast or Save the System?

Health reform has presented a vexing dilemma from the beginning. With a system that everyone knows is broken, should we kill the beast and start over? Or take a more conservative approach and build something better from what we have now? Liberals wanted to scrap it all and create a single-payer system. President Obama opted for the more conservative approach. And now, on the eve of the final phase of implementing Obamacare, Republicans are pushing harder than ever to either kill the beast, or at the very least, declare it a failure.

Drawing on the team that built the micro-targeting success of Obama’s 2012 campaign, the Obamacare Team is working at a fever pitch to be ready for the October 1 rollout of health insurance marketplaces. That’s when millions of previously uninsured Americans can start buying health insurance at competitive prices. The fate of Obamacare — and perhaps Obama’s legacy — depends on being ready and turning out millions of uninsured Americans to sign up for health insurance in this new marketplace.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the House of Representatives took their 39th vote to repeal the law, mocking it as a train wreck. Crossroads GPS, the PAC co-founded by Karl Rove, rolled out a video titled “ObamaCareNado,” depicting a tornado of chaos ripping through terrified communities.

The current tableau make us wonder what got into John Boehner when asked right after the election if repealing Obamacare was still his mission. He responded, “Well, I think the election changes that. It’s pretty clear that the president was reelected, Obamacare is the law of the land.”

Perhaps soon, we will glimpse the difference between stubbornness and persistence.

Click here to read more in the New York Times and click here to watch the ObamaCareNado.

Bullfight, photograph © Mait Jüriado / flickr

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