Have any of you ever watched Texas Hold-em Poker.  There is always the moment when someone goes all in.  Then everyone turns over their cards and they wait, desperately, for the river card.  In most cases everything depends on the river card.  If you lose, after you went all in, the defeat is total.

Democrats have gone all in on ObamaCare.  Republicans not so much.  Republicans will be blamed for the government shut down, but that would hardly be a fatal blow.  They did this in 1995 and they still maintained control of both the House and the Senate at the next election.  But Democrats are risking everything on ObamaCare.  Shutting down the government is one thing.  Shutting it down so you can arrogantly inflict a major disaster on the American people is something else.

We will soon know.  If the administration had half a brain they would have tried out ObamaCare in a couple of small states to figure out how it worked.  That would have been the smart thing to do.  But instead the administration decided to implement ObamaCare all over the country at once.  When the clock struck midnight Monday night, ObamaCare became reality.

Almost immediately there was a mad rush to check it out.  Most people appear to have gotten a busy signal.  Millions of people have been checking out the ObamaCare website.  If they like what they find, Democrats have just run the table.  If they hate what they find, Democrats just doubled down on disaster.

So how will we know?  The answer is easy.  It all depends on price.   ObamaCare is either a great deal or it isn’t.  At least some people are expecting to get free health care.  They are going to be bitterly disappointed to learn they are expected to pay for this.  Others will be hoping to buy high quality health insurance at great savings.  So far, that doesn’t seem to be happening.  Instead people are reportedly shocked by the high premiums and the high deductibles.   This could be a case of nationwide sticker shock.

What makes this worse is that the highest costs are for people between 19 and 34.  The Obama administration desperately needs a high percentage of people in this demographic to participate.  Yet ObamaCare appears to be least attractive to exactly this group.  If this age group doesn’t enroll, ObamaCare is financially insolvent from day one.

So who will like ObamaCare?  That is easy.  It will be very attractive to people who have no money, because they will get it for free.  It will also be attractive to people who have pre-existing conditions and cannot buy coverage anywhere else.  In the health insurance industry, they call this adverse selection.  If this happens it will put ObamaCare financing into an irreversible death spiral.  The higher they raise premiums, the more adverse selection.  Eventually you can’t possibly charge enough.

I think ObamaCare is going to be a nationwide disaster impossible to ignore.  If that is true, Republicans will go from villains for shutting down the government, to heroes for trying to save us from ObamaCare.

As John Kennedy once said:  “there is an old saying that victory has 100 fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”   The jury is out on ObamaCare and when that verdict is delivered by the American people it will be the ultimate river card.  Anything could happen, but right now ObamaCare looks like an orphan.

TDM