WSJ’s Daniel Henninger: Obamcare Is the ‘Hurricane Katrina of Entitlements’
On Thursday, Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger discussed the growing sense of crisis among congressional Democrats surrounding the failed roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. Henninger told WSJ editorial board member Mary Kissel that the ACA is the entitlement equivalent of Hurricane Katrina in terms of its political ramifications.
“Is this the beginning of a broader movement on the left to oppose the law,” Kissel asked after noting that 15 congressional Democrats recently wrote the president to express their concerns about the problematic ACA rollout.
“What took so long for Democrats to figure out that Obamacare was going to roll out like this?” Kissel asked Henninger. “They knew years ago what they signed, didn’t they?”
“No,” Henninger replied with a laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
“Unfortunately, they didn’t look very closely and now they are hitting the panic button,” he continued. Henninger said that the closeness of the Virginia gubernatorial contest has heightened Democrats’ sense of unease surrounding the ACA roll-out.
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He noted that Democrats are demanding the White House fix all the problems associated with the federal insurance exchanges website by the end of November, which is unlikely.
“This has become the Hurricane Katrina of entitlements,” Henninger added. “It isn’t just the software, it isn’t just the website, Mary, it’s also the fact that people are having their insurance policies cancelled and finding that they’re not going to be able to go see their doctor.”
“That’s not going to stop unless you basically blow up the Affordable Care Act because it is designed to move people towards the exchanges,” he said. “There’s no reason to see why the Democrats are going to get any relief from the bad press that’s pouring out of Obamacare.”
Henninger insisted that the president’s statements that these eventualities would not materialize were flatly untrue. “In American politics, that’s not good,” Henninger said. “That causes the president huge political problems, as it did for Richard Nixon in Watergate and, of course, George W. Bush and Katrina.”
“I think the president is in a maelstrom and it’s not obvious at all how he gets out of it, Mary,” Henninger concluded.
Watch the clip below via WSJ Live:
[Photo via screen grab ]
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