Disappointed: The Rollout of Obamacare

I voted twice for Barack Obama.  Both times with great pride (though admittedly more pride the first time).  And there have been a number of things that I’ve been very proud of during his first term.  His appointments of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the Affordable Care Act, the capture of Osama bin Laden, and his impressive work on gay rights all stand-out.

There have also been things that I’ve been deeply disappointed in him.  I am supremely sad that the NASA Space Shuttle program is closed but Guantanamo is not.  Civil liberties and people’s rights to privacy have taken a strong hit, and the climate crisis is something no one is talking about addressing.  Admittedly, these aren’t all his fault (I feel like the civil liberties one might rest pretty heavily on him, though), as he cannot unilaterally make decisions, but as a whole, I’ve had the good and I’ve had the bad with him as my president.

The rollout of the ACA, though, may take the cake when it comes to the bad.  The Affordable Care Act was a major, major undertaking and will give millions and millions of Americans who could not otherwise afford it access to healthcare.  I fervently believe this is a good thing, and that working to create a healthier and stronger citizenry is always in the best interest of the country.  This is a belief that both the President and I share.

However, this was not a belief that many people shared, and as a result, the bill cost the Democrats control of the United State House in 2010.  SIXTY Democratic members of the Congress lost their election that year, the majority of which voted for the bill.  Longtime politicians like Russ Feingold, Jim Oberstar, John Spratt, and Blanche Lincoln all went down in large part to this bill.  I have oftentimes complained that my least favorite thing about the President as a politician (not as an elected official) has been that he doesn’t campaign enough for down-ballot races (Shelley Berkley’s 2012 loss still sticks in my side as a prime example of how he should have done more during his first term to get more Democrats in Congress, especially considering Dean Heller voted with the Tea Party twice yesterday), so he owed them a successful launch of this program.

And yet, were it not for the government shutdown and the debt ceiling crisis, we’d have been spending the last few weeks talking about the utter failure of the launch of this program.  The Republicans have been saying for the past three years that this would be a disaster, and while the actual law hasn’t “destroyed the economy” like many said it will, it’s hard to call the launch of the program anything other than a failure.  The President and his tech teams should have known demand would be huge at the start of the program (they have been saying for years how beneficial it would be), and should have better prepared.  Kathleen Sebelius’s truly awful performance on The Daily Show a few weeks back proved that they weren’t ready for such a failure.  This should have been flawless-the 2014 midterms still could become a referendum on the ACA, and for a President who frequently complains about not having the tools in Congress to get what he wants done, and for a man who follows two presidents that were excellent stumpers in chief for their parties in elections, he shouldn’t have given the Republicans such an obvious opening to complain about the bill.  And he and his administration should have more respect for the men and women who gave up their political careers to pass the most important piece of his presidential legacy into law.