I was reading Sarah Kliff’s article, “Did Sen. Coburn lose his cancer doctor because of Obamacare?”, explaining the circumstances why Senator Coburn’s long time cancer doctor was not covered by the Affordable Care Act and I started to wonder where we went wrong. I really like the idea expressed by the President that most of us would be able to keep our doctor and insurance plan while at the same time help the uninsured get coverage. This was a win-win situation. Now we find that Senator Coburn’s experience is far from a win-win situation. This was not supposed to happen.

For the moment let us assume that the President honestly believed that the Affordable Care Act would allow most of us to keep our doctor and insurance plan. This was both good politics and policy. The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 and according to Sarah’s reporting that was “how insurance markets worked before the health care law and how they work after it.” So if the President wanted people like Senator Coburn to keep their doctor we have to ask the question, why didn’t anyone try to minimize this problem in the last three years with some good policies? In the not to distant past we used to have a class of bureaucrats who could turn almost any dog piece of legislation into a workable policy. Where have all of the good bureaucrats gone? Did they look at the Affordable Care Act and give up? Three years out of the starting gate and all we have to show for it is a lousy web site and a bunch of narrow network insurance plans. When do we start winning?