Sam Baker points out that “just because something is happening and Obamacare exists doesn’t mean it’s happening because Obamacare exists”:
The Affordable Care Act has become the go-to scapegoat for just about everything people don’t like about health care, if not in the economy overall. The law is being blamed for trends, economic incentives, and basic realities that it did not create and that were part of the health care system long before President Obama was even elected.
There’s not a big difference between “how Obamacare works” and “how health insurance works”—and that, health experts said, is what makes the law such a convenient target.
Drum chimes in:
Obamacare has been a boon for employers and insurers who want to cut back their health benefits but don’t want to take the blame for it. They just blame Obamacare instead.
Yuval Levin suspects that recent actions by the administration are intended to shift blame back to the insurers:
My guess, and it is just that, is that the administration has taken these steps because their internal projections at this point suggest some kind of disastrous replay of the politics of October and November in January, and this time they are intent on getting people to blame the insurers instead of the administration. I think that’s very unlikely to work, but it’s not hard to see why they would be desperate to try.
The Dish 