ObamaCare author: Health law is 'really complicated'

The Hill ^ | December 3, 2014 | Alexander Bolton

[Fantasywriter]

‘This “Law” was never meant to succeed.’

That is true. It was a hurriedly cobbled together monstrosity, and was never expected to become law. The normal procedure would have been for the corresponding House bill to go to conference with the Senate bill, and get the bugs ironed out via a hybrid version. The only thing ultimately needed for this to happen was for the Dems to hold Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in MA—a sure bet, or so they thought at the time.

However, Brown stormed to victory, destroying the Senate’s 60 vote margin. At that point, they couldn’t afford to take the bill to conference. They would have lost the vote in the Senate. So they had to take the Senate’s piecemeal disaster and make it law, via a thoroughly underhanded tactic. [The Reconciliation Process—never intended for legislation of the size, type and scope of Obamacare.]

That is one reason the law is so terrible. There are many others. But just for the record, this is not the law any Dem expected to be passed. They were counting on the House/Senate conference process to produce a more workable version.

[TurboZamboni]

ObamaCare condensed to 4 sentences:
 
 1. In order to insure the uninsured, we first have to uninsure the insured. 
 
 2. Next, we require the newly uninsured to be re-insured. 
 
 3. To re-insure the newly uninsured, they are required to pay extra charges to be re-insured. 
 
 
4. The extra charges are required so that the original insured, who became uninsured, and then became re-insured, can pay enough extra so that the original uninsured can be insured, which will be free of charge to them. 
 This, ladies and gentlemen, is called “redistribution of wealth” ... or, by its more common name, SOCIALISM.  

[Fantasywriter]

That is a very good summary. The main thing you left out is the death panels.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

“.....Harkin, however, believes Obama and Democratic leaders could have enacted better policy had they stood up to three centrists who balked at the public option: Sens. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), a Democrat turned independent, Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

He argues they could have been persuaded to vote for the legislation if Obama had put more effort into lobbying them.

“The House passed public option. We had the votes in the Senate for cloture,” he said.

“There were only three Democrats that held out and we could have had those three,” he added. “We had “[Sen.] Mark Pryor [D-Ark.] so we could have had Lincoln. We could have had all three of them if the president would have been just willing to do some political things but he wouldn’t do it.”

Harkin and other liberals are now faced with the bitter irony that the centrists tried to placate five years ago by crafting a labyrinthine market-based reform are now all out of the Senate.

“So as a result we’ve got this complicated thing out there called the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

He believes Congress should have moved legislation in the first 100 days after Obama’s inauguration, which drew over a million people to the National Mall on a frigid January day.

“There’s this old saying, ‘If you have the votes, vote. If you don’t, talk.’ We had the votes but we talked,” he said.

Then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) held listening sessions with Republican senators for months but ultimately failed to pick up a single GOP vote on the floor.

Harkin acknowledged, however, that knowing what’s right is always much easier in hindsight.

“I can Monday-morning quarterback with the best of them,” he quipped.”