Republicans, June 1: “Please Mr. President, just cancel Obamacare.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, July 1: “Please Mr. President, just change Obamacare.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, August 1: “Please Mr. President, just end the mandate.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, September 1: “Please Mr. President, we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow Obamacare down.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, October 1: “Please Mr. President, just defund Obamacare.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, November 1: “Please Mr. President, just cancel the mandate for a year.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, December 1: “Pretty please Mr. President, just delay the mandate for a few days.”
Obama: “No.”
Republicans, today, Monday, December 23: “We’re sorry, Americans. We tried our best.”
Obama: “Let me clarify that you will automatically qualify for a ‘hardship exemption’ from the mandate if your health plan was canceled.”
For the record, today, Monday, December 23 was the deadline to bind health coverage that will start January 1.
Also for the record, I’m not dumb enough to go without health insurance. I’m a 64-year-old American in good health with a cancelled Blue Cross policy that I liked. I’m not dumb enough to go without health insurance because my friend the former South Puffin mayor tripped on the sidewalk the other day. He broke his neck. He’s paralyzed. He was in pretty good health, too.
It took me only 28 otherwise billable hours including three looooooooooong phone calls to sign up. I (probably) now have a policy I don’t like, from a government I don’t trust, confirmed by a website that doesn’t work.
As of January 13, thirteen days after every American is mandated to have health insurance coverage, the Obama administration says that 2.1 million people have health coverage thanks to Obamacare. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius fudged the numbers, of course, but that’s the bottom line.
If I were the Obama administration, I don’t think I’d be quite that proud of it.