I'm not particularly worried that the current flap over the Obamacare program is going to doom it. First off, I think most people understand that there's a big difference between a product being flawed and the means by which you order it being flawed. I could have set up a crappy website to sign up for any great thing you're happy you signed up for.
Secondly, as Kevin Drum points out, the poll that really tracks this kind of stuff — the Kaiser Family Foundation survey — doesn't show any real erosion of support for the Affordable Care Act. Some opponents of Obamacare are trying to prove otherwise by citing the fact that it says only 25% of Americans like the law as it is. What they don't note is that an additional 22% of it want the law expanded, presumably into something more like Single Payer. Most of those folks do not support its removal.
24% want the law repealed and not replaced with something else — in other words, go back to what we had — and 13% want it repealed and replaced with a Republican-sponsored alternative. That last number is worth considering. There really is no Republican-sponsored alternative. There are ideas like more tort reform and selling insurance across state lines but even the folks proposing them don't think those will change a lot. If the Republicans had it in them to come up with one — if they had the initiative or if they had some great ideas that differed substantially from Obamacare — don't you think they would have proposed them by now?
There's an old saying in politics: You can't beat something with nothing. The G.O.P. is attempting to beat Obamacare with nothing. I can't imagine what a real Republican plan would look like if it didn't raise rates on some folks, deny some access to the doctor of their choice or simply not solve all the problems that most people agree need solving. I suspect they know that, which is why they haven't released one, put it up on a website so analysts can have at it, and announced, "Get rid of Obamacare and go with our much better proposal." If they could really do that — if there really was a better solution — that might actually get rid of Obamacare. In fact, folks like me would champion it. Wonder why they don't do this.