My must read of the day is "Why I'm Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare," by Ron Fournier in the National Journal:
Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multi-million-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.
Then officials started fudging numbers and massaging facts to promote implementation, nothing illegal or even extraordinary for this era of spin. But they did more damage to the credibility of ACA advocates. […]
Advocates for a strong executive branch, including me, have given the White House a pass on its rule-making authority, because implementing such a complicated law requires flexibility. But the law may be getting stretched to the point of breaking. Think of the ACA as a game of Jenga: Adjust one piece and the rest are affected; adjust too many and it falls.
The latest delay of the employer mandate is nothing more than a political change, making the president and the delays increasingly difficult for supporters to defend.
These changes aren’t intended to help anyone except elected Democrats. They’re a political ploy to protect the president from bad press. The delay, says the administration, is intended to give employers "a little more time to adjust to providing coverage."
A little more time? As someone once said: What difference at this point does it make?
Businesses have been preparing for the law since it was signed in 2010, and a major concern business owners have, going back to 2011, is the cost. A delay is not going to change that.
This administration has a tendency to make changes that benefit them in the short term without thinking of the effects its decisions will have down the road and on the Democratic Party as a whole. It’s all about Obama and his legacy—no one else. That’s why Obamacare is appropriately named.