Obamacare’s open enrollment 2.0 starts on Saturday and the Obama administration—not to mention millions of Americans—is holding its breath hoping that things go better than it’s first effort. Hey, how could they not?
But it’s amazing how Obamacare has become a metaphor for the president and his administration.
- Both beat the odds to get approval, one in the 2008 presidential election and the other through a convoluted legislative process.
- Which inexorably leads to the next point: both have been excruciatingly partisan.
- There were great expectations for both, with huge fanfare leading up to the launch and assurances that the country was entering a new era.
- Obama wanted to prove his thesis that big government can be effective government—and in both cases, plus many more, he has been proven wrong.
- It quickly became very apparent that neither the president nor Obamacare would live up to the hype.
- Both required a massive number of community organizers to try and convince the public that they really should support the effort.
- As time passed, everyone recognized that both had greatly overpromised and underdelivered.
- Even in the midst of embarrassing and undeniable failures, Obama kept emphasizing the (mostly exaggerated) positives of his policies and Obamacare while downplaying any failures—with the promise to get it right quickly.
- In both cases, no one wanted to accept the blame for the failures, especially the man at the top.
And now we are entering Obamacare 2.0; and with a Republican House and Senate we may be entering Obama-presidency 2.0. At least Team Obama has learned a few things.
This time around, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell is tamping down expectations, unlike the initial rollout when then-Secretary Kathleen Sebelius put out a press release on Oct. 1, 2013, extolling the new era of easy access to affordable coverage.
Burwell has even lowered expectations about the number of people estimated to enroll in Obamacare in 2015, suggesting it might be 20 percent fewer than originally predicted.
That’s a good step, but no one needs to lower expectations about the Obama presidency. The president has managed to do that all by himself.