And just so you know where I'm coming from, I didn't like ACA in the first place. Not that I understood details like websites and cancellations or was particularly precient, but I just didn't buy that we could keep the insurance companies, add people, add benefits, add government, not make hard choices for what we will pay for (Sarah Palin's death panels) and still remotely make the math work. It was my opinion that ACA would blow up so badly that it would sour America on the idea that universal coverage is even feasible (which is nonsense).

But why did we pass something so messed up? IMO it is a function of how politics runs these days and is ultimately our fault.

To start, yes, the broad framework Obama originally proposed was basically the Heritage Foundation scheme. It certainly wasn't a single payer or socialized plan we liberals would have proposed. But Republicans showed no interest in realistically negotiating from a starting point that was already far closer to them than to me. It was about stopping Obama so that they could later fix healthcare (and other issues) as they see fit once they regain power from the ashes, not working with Obama to fix healthcare (and other issues).

So the administration and its allies had to get the majorities (and more in the Senate) from a much smaller pool. This meant that every vote became precious. Every congressman and senator who was a realistic candidate to vote in favor had outsized leverage. Which is especially dangerous for the Democratic Party.

What Will Rogers meant when he said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party... I'm a Democrat." is that the Democratic Party was at the time and is now less a shared ideology than a collection of interests. A loose collaboration that like other collaborations often only gets things done by giving the other interests what they want. And that's what happened with ACA. To get enough votes given the limited pool, Obama and the crafters had to appease the insurance companies, hospitals, AMA, unions, AARP, women's rights advocates, liberal do gooders (much less so) and many others I can't think of right now.

Hence the mess.

So sure, you can say this is Obama and the Democrats' fault, and you are right. But you're still missing the bigger picture. Obama didn't intend to make bad law. He did so because bad law was the only law feasible given a dysfunctional political system driven by the instructions of the voters. Voters who even now, as demonstrated here, believe solutions lie only on their side and look not for compromise but holding firm until the day their side is in power and can run things properly.==============================

What you described is the

essence of the political process. The political parties in this country are always

a loose collaboration of interests rather than groups with shared ideologies.

Expecting any sort of shared ideology is idealistic-and anything but realistic.

A Frankenstein such as the

ACA is what you're going to get every time you politicize an economic

good. The ACA, though, wasn't the original Frankenstein. It's the second

generation Frankenstein. The politicization of the healthcare sector began with

Medicare and Medicaid. As soon as those programs began, distortions started to

take place. Adjustments were made. More regulations were passed. And so on and

so forth.

At first the issue seemed

small. The ratio of workers to seniors was high. The first distortions only

modestly changed the prior price. (This is almost always true on a year to year

basis, but compounding catches up in the long term.) Exotic medical techniques

weren't as prevalent as they are today. People didn't regularly sue doctors for

every little thing. All in all, prices were reasonable.

Then the government got

involved "for the benefit of everyone"�. Politicians started "acting in our best

interests"�. Cuz they know better than the rest of us. And what effect does that

have? Companies start vying for political favors, and those that have more

money are the ones that get them. You want to crush the little guy? Just get

the government involved in his business. Politicizing an industry always hurts

the little guy in favor of big business. Big business and big government go

hand in hand. This is the part that libertarians simply cannot understand about

liberals. Liberals believe, as is evident from your post, that a system can be

designed-if a party is ideologically uniform-to benefit everyone. Libertarians

know that every aspect of that belief, while well intentioned, contradicts

reality. No one person or small group of people can anticipate how everyone

else is going to perceive and react to something that's imposed upon them by

mandate. They also know that individuals will poke every hole in the system

that exists (e.g. the amount of people on disability has skyrocketed in the

last several years). The bigger and more complex the system, the more holes

there will be.

Is ACA solely the

Democrats fault? Well it did pass without a single Republican vote. It IS Obama's

legacy. It WAS something Pelosi said we had to pass just to find out what's in

it. Well, now we're finding out. For the Democrats not to accept all responsibility

(after all, they were previously taking all the credit) just goes to show why

politicizing healthcare never should've been done in the first place.

But here we are, like it

or not. And each side is going to consume themselves blaming the other. Welcome

to politics. This is precisely what the Democrats were asking for, whether they

knew it or not. It was always going to be a mess, just as many have said (and

were ignored) from the beginning.