February 10, 2016 12:31 PM UTC

Repeal Obamacare! Oh, Wait a Minute...

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• by: Colorado Pols

The AP has a great story up today via the Fort Collins Coloradoan on the dramatic drop in the number of uninsured Americans following passage of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Much to the chagrin of local Republicans bent on repealing President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment, Colorado is at the top of the list of success stories:

GOP presidential candidates are vowing to repeal “Obamacare,” while offering hardly any detail on how they’d replace it without millions losing coverage.

Politically, the eight states with statistically significant coverage gains in the National Health Interview Survey are a mix of red, blue and purple. They are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, and New York. Five have GOP governors.

As a whole, the nation had an uninsured rate of 9.1 percent during the first nine months of 2015, according to the survey, an ongoing research project by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The uninsured rate was 14.4 percent in 2013, before the law’s big coverage expansion…

That poses a dilemma for Republican presidential candidates. Indeed, a recent blueprint from a group of conservative policy experts for replacing the health law said Republicans will need some kind of “grandfathering exemption” to avoid disrupting the lives of people who have gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act. [Pols emphasis]

What we’re seeing here is exactly what Republicans who opposed the passage of Obamacare in 2009-10 were most afraid of–not that they could admit being afraid of it, but was always the bottom line lurking beneath their shrill and desperate arguments against passage. After passage, the fear of what’s happening today drove the GOP campaign to repeal the law before it could take full effect, instilling Republican opponents of the law with a profound sense of urgency to stop it, and rationalizing all of the outlandish claims of harm the law was inflicting on Americans.

They were afraid because they knew that Obamacare would work. That it would make health coverage affordable for millions of Americans, absorb those millions into a less selective risk pool, and put in place a system that will hurt millions of people to take away. The fact is, Obamacare is not a “government takeover of health care”–the plan has its origins largely in conservative designs for health care reform, a mandate to obtain coverage and assistance for those who can’t afford it.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there remains a strong possibility that the success of Obamacare will do lasting political damage to Republicans who so bitterly opposed it. What’s missing right now, frankly, may be a successful repeal effort, or at least one with an appreciable chance of success. Up until now, Republican threats against Obamacare have been threats against an abstraction, a monster they could define for the public. But increasingly, the public can see with their own eyes that Obamacare is helping people. They know someone who is getting coverage cheaper, or for the first time. Or, like millions of Americans, they are themselves directly benefiting.

And folks, there is no going back. Too many would suffer, for no other reason than to help the GOP win a six-year-old political struggle that has lost its ability to frighten–except maybe to frighten those who could now lose what they have gained.

The war on Obamacare is over. It’s time for the politicians to catch up with that reality.