President Barack Obama is playing politics in delaying the health insurance mandate for medium-size businesses until 2016 — and callously ensuring the next president will "inherit a mess," Karl Rove said Wednesday.
In commentary published online by the
Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night, the former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush said Obama "saw the firestorm that erupted last fall" when an estimated 6.2 million Americans began to lose insurance policies that didn't meet Obamacare standards.
"The president didn't want another avalanche of cancellations before this fall's midterm election," Rove writes. "The consequences would be disastrous for the president's popularity and that of the congressional Democrats who loyally voted for the Affordable Care Act, sight unseen and text unread."
But Rove maintains the loss of insurance coverage "is by design," arguing that Obamacare "was intended to move America toward a single-payer system as more small businesses dropped coverage, dumped workers into the exchanges, and substituted a $2,000 fine for the ever-increasing premiums."
"And after he's gone?" Rove says, "Obamacare won't be fully operational until at least 2016, just in time for the next president to deal with its exploding costs and imploding private insurance system."
"From the record number of Americans on food stamps to the worst labor-force participation rate since the 1970s to rising political polarization to retreating U.S. power overseas and increasing Middle East chaos and violence, Mr. Obama's successor — Republican or Democratic — will inherit a mess," Rove says.
But the president apparently is not concerned with a flood of problems down the road, Rove writes, relating that Obama
was reportedly overheard earlier this week joking with French President François Hollande: "That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want."
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