It’s been interesting that in the course of this week, the one year anniversary of Democrats’ unpopular and expensive health care bill becoming law, we’ve seen supporters of the bill acknowledge some of its serious flaws.

According to Politico, “Rep. Anthony Weiner [D-NY] said Wednesday he was looking into how a health law waiver might work for New York City. Weiner, who is likely to run for mayor of New York, said that because of the city’s special health care infrastructure, his office was looking into alternatives that might make more sense.” Weiner said, “The president said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it.’. . . I’m in the process now of trying to see if we can take [President Barack Obama] up on it in the city of New York, … and I’m taking a look at all of the money we spend in Medicaid and Medicare and maybe New York City can come up with a better plan.”

While it’s possible Weiner may want a waiver so he can impose even more controls on health care in New York, his discussion of a waiver is an implicit admission of the burdensome mandates on states and individuals in the Democrats’ health care bill.

As Sen. Orrin Hatch, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, explained in an op-ed for The Salt Lake Tribune yesterday, “[G]overnors of both political parties were clear when Congress debated the $2.6 trillion health law that they could not afford a massive expansion in Medicaid. Washington didn’t listen and plowed forward instead by putting 16 million Americans onto this already broken entitlement. States are already facing a collective $175 billion budget shortfall – the highest since the Great Depression. . . . Furthermore, for all of the talk about state flexibility, this federal one-size-fits-all law leaves Washington calling the shots. . . . In a nod to states balking at the federal requirements being imposed on them, the president recently announced that states could apply for waivers from the health law in 2014 – three years earlier than was in the health law. Sounds good – but the hitch is that states will still have to meet all of the ObamaCare requirements. That’s why this proposal landed with a thud with governors.”

On Tuesday, Politico reported, “Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz says the health overhaul law’s employer requirements will impose ‘too great’ a pressure on small businesses. Schultz supported the law as he watched his company’s health insurance tab — $250 million as of last year — surmount its coffee bill. But he told The Seattle Times in an interview published Tuesday that he’s now worried about what happens when it takes full effect in 2014: . . . ‘I think as the bill is currently written and if it was going to land in 2014 under the current guidelines, the pressure on small businesses, because of the mandate, is too great.’”

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), one of only three doctors in the Senate, elaborated on this problem for National Review Online this week. “Under the guise of ‘responsibility,’ the [Democrats’ health care bill] fines most employers who do not offer employees health coverage. According to a range of nonpartisan experts, this type of de facto mandate has been shown to lower wages and reduce jobs,” Sen. Coburn wrote. “In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill reduces the number of workers in the labor force by 800,000 over a decade.”

As John Thune, chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, wrote in an op-ed for Politico yesterday, “After a year of learning what is in the law — and seeing its effect on families, small businesses and our economy — it is now clear that Obamacare is a failed experiment. Sadly, this failure was predictable and very expensive.”

When even supporters of the Democrats’ bill are seeking exemptions from it, it’s clear the whole thing should be repealed and replaced. As Sen. Thune put it, “Rather than fighting reality by trying to persuade the people to love a law that does not live up to its hype, Congress should scrap this failed program and replace it with common-sense reforms that can truly lower costs.”

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Hat tip: jackohoft

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