Muscatine

"What we've learned through the course of this program is that this is really  not a sensible way for the healthcare system to be run."

That was Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services'  Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, talking. He was  specifically responding to the apparently surprising need to halt enrollments in  a program designed as a temporary bridge for people with preexisting conditions  who couldn't wait until the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) fully kicks  in next year. The program was allocated $5 billion, but some estimate it will  take $40 billion to fund the effort.

Such surprises are becoming routine. The New York Times has reported that  many small and mid-size firms may be opting out of Obamacare entirely. "The new  healthcare law created powerful incentives for smaller employers to  self-insure," Deborah J. Chollet of the Mathematica Policy Research told the  paper. "This trend could destabilize small-group insurance markets and erode  protections provided by the Affordable Care Act."

It turns out that Obamacare actually makes self-insurance less of a gamble  because you can always throw workers on public exchanges without penalty.  Naturally, the administration's response is to look for ways to tighten the  ratchet and make self-insurance harder. It's a typical response. The  shortcomings of a wildly ambitious law only justify more regulatory  strong-arming.

As Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes, the NYT never  paused to ask why it's OK that "a design flaw in the law somehow empowers"  regulators to punish private employers. But this is typical of so much coverage  of Obamacare. It is just taken for granted that thing must be made to work.

Although it's true that we collectively spent a lot of time shouting about  Obamacare, we spent precious little time actually debating it. Most of the media  covered the discussion as if it were a spectator sport, with the Democrats the  hometown favorite. And much of the remainder seemed to assume that healthcare  reporting amounted to explaining why Obamacare was a good idea. The facade of  objectivity was often maintained by citing carefully crafted CBO projections  that reflected political assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out.

Reality is teaching the propeller-heads a lesson. Despite President Obama  promising that his plan would not add "one dime" to the deficit, the Government  Accountability Office announced last week that it would more likely add  620,000,000,000,000 dimes (or $6.2 trillion) over 75 years.

Obama also promised that "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your  healthcare plan." Estimates for how many Americans will lose their existing  plans vary. The CBO says 5 million to 20 million. The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. says about 30% of employers will push workers onto the public  system.

Even the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters have started to freak out over the  gold-plated benefits many of their members will lose, thanks to the guy they  helped reelect. Another irony: While the president rode to reelection hyping a  mythical GOP "war on women," incentives to drop spouses from employee coverage  under his plan will only increase, a particular concern for mothers with small  kids. The good news is that if they keep their coverage, it will cover birth  control pills.

Meanwhile, not just Taco Bell and Wendy's are demoting many full-time workers  to part-time work. Some of Obama's core constituencies — universities and state  governments — are cutting hours. For instance, Stark State College in Ohio sent  a letter to faculty saying that "to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care  Act ... employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more  than an average of 29 hours per week."

Virtually all of these problems and many others were predicted by  conservatives, but the media rolled their collective eyes in response. The Iraq  war justifiably led to a lot of media soul-searching about how journalists were  too credulous of the Bush administration's arguments. A similar discussion about  how we got stuck in the Obamacare quagmire seems long  overdue.