In his Friday column for the New York Times, award-winning economist Paul Krugman celebrates the unveiling of the Obamacare exchanges, writing that health reform looks as if it's "here to stay" and that, as a result, Republicans' "worst fears will indeed be realized."
"It’s long been clear that the great fear of the Republican Party was not that health reform would fail, but that it would succeed," Krugman writes before dismissing the program's early "glitches" as the byproduct of greater demand than expected. "[T]he glitches of October won’t matter in the long run," he writes. "But why are they actually encouraging? Because they appear, for the most part, to be the result of the sheer volume of traffic, which has been much heavier than expected."
Of course, it’s important that people who want to sign up can actually do so. But the computer problems can and will be fixed. So, by March 31, when enrollment for 2014 closes, we can be reasonably sure that millions of Americans who were previously uninsured will have coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare will have become a reality, something people depend on, rather than some fuzzy notion Republicans could demonize. And it will be very hard to take that coverage away.
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