Two days have passed since the deadline for the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. March 31 was the last day you were allowed to not have health insurance without paying an extra tax. So, in true American fashion, hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans put off their chores until the last day, then scrambled to connect to HealthCare.gov and flooded the already overloaded call centers.
The numbers came in yesterday: new insurance sign-ups had reached the magic 7 million number that was the benchmark for success by the Department of Health and Human Services back when they were rolling out HealthCare.gov. Meanwhile, the quintessential Louisiana Democrat (and we're not talking about any of the Landrieus here) had this to say about the implications for November:
"Democratic voters might now be motivated to stand by the administration’s top legislative achievement more than ever — the same ABC/Post poll found that Democratic support for ObamaCare has reached 76 percent, which is up 11 percentage points from January. My fellow Democrats feared we didn’t have a motivating issue.... I like being on the side of healthcare consumer. I think that is a winning argument for Democrats." -- James Carville, "O-Care a Winning Bet for Dems," The Hill, April 1, 2014
