On Obamacare’s first anniversary, let’s give the president his due: It wouldn’t be in law today without his persistent push for its passage.
Not that his policy arguments carried the day or were persuasive. They weren’t. No, in the end, Obamacare was passed because the president had so tied his political fate to it that it became quite literally impossible for most members of his party in Congress to oppose it. And so it passed.
Other presidents have staked their presidencies on early legislative initiatives too, and then used their success in securing their enactment to aid their reelection. President Reagan certainly comes to mind in that regard, with his 1981 tax cut featuring prominently in his 1984 campaign. And Bill Clinton made his tax-hike and deficit-reduction plan of 1993 the centerpiece of his economic message in 1996.
The problem for President Obama, however, is that, unlike the Reagan tax cut, Obamacare will do almost nothing worth running on before 2012. The main selling point for the law — the supposed “universal coverage” proponents erroneously say the law will deliver — doesn’t kick in until at least 2014. That’s when the “big bang” of Obamacare comes into play: the individual and employer mandates; the new entitlement expansions; and the one-size-fits-all insurance plans.
Between now and then, there’s a lot of regulation to be issued, but there won’t be any real action on the ground where Americans get their health care (other than some tax increases and Medicare cuts the administration will never mention anyway). And so the law’s apologists are left with nothing to talk about except the supposed “early benefits” of Obamacare, like coverage of 26-year-olds on their parents’ plans and the new high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions.
But these provisions are minor matters in the scheme of things. They certainly did not require a 2,700-page bill to address. And so few Americans have benefited from them that they hardly register at all in the public consciousness. Only about 12,000 people have signed up for the poorly constructed risk pools, and no one expects the other insurance regulations to help more than a tiny percentage of the population. For most Americans, these “early benefits” are simply non-events. If the president were to feature them as large achievements of his presidency in 2012, it would strike most voters as the trumpeting of the trivial.
With so little to work with, and intense opposition among those pushing for repeal, the president is unlikely to feature Obamacare at all in his 2012 campaign, and certainly not in the way Reagan touted his 1981 tax cut in 1984. President Obama will no doubt defend the new health law from every attack, even as he tries to deflate the repeal push with minor concessions. But, having exhausted his first term securing passage of Obamacare, the president will have to find some other rationale to justify requesting a second term.