So far, neither side in the never-ending debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act appears close to conceding defeat.
While proponents point to the historic increase in health insurance coverage, detractors highlight the law's bumpy implementation, big premium hikes (in some places) and the recent failure of a number of nonprofit health co-ops created by the law.
In a Monday column for the conservative Washington Times, however, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, suggested that the landmark health overhaul would soon collapse, leaving nobody to defend President Obama's signature domestic policy.
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"As people log on to the government exchanges this year, they will see the telltale signs of Obamacare's impending failure," he wrote. "These include: costs soaring, cancellations mounting, and choices disappearing."
Barrasso predicted that getting more people to sign up for plans on the PPACA exchanges would be tough.
"The administration is playing the lowered expectations game because they know how hard it is to convince more Americans to buy government-mandated insurance that costs so much," Barrasso writes. "For so many people, Obamacare doesn't have much to offer."
Even proponents of the law admit that those who remain uninsured –– after forgoing two enrollment periods –– will be the hardest to convince to enroll. And it is also true that a significant number of people who purchased insurance either left their plans or allowed them to lapse because they either weren't getting the subsidies they expected to cover the cost or they decided that the premiums were simply too high regardless.
But liberal economist Paul Krugman –– a major PPACA backer –– notes that this isn't the first time that Barrasso has predicted failure for Obamacare or dismissed apparent signs of success. In fact, at the end of the first open enrollment period in March 2014, Barrasso claimed that the Obama administration was "cooking the books" to back up its assertions that nearly 7 million had signed up for marketplace insurance plans.
At the time, he told Fox News, "I've looked at this 10 different ways. This health care law is unfixable."
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