The dog who caught the car

It's actually amusing watching the Republicans in congress flailing around trying to figure out how to repeal Obamacare. It turns out they didn't actually understand what it does and have no idea of what to do instead. Here's Sen. Schatz (D-HI) telling the amusing tale of Republicans begging him for help because they don't want to own what they are about to do.

"They want to be able to claim this is part of a good faith negotiation, but it's simply not.They have no idea what comes next so they want some bipartisan cover for their nonsense behavior," Schatz said.

He also said Republicans were looking for Democratic cooperation so that they can share the blame."They're really worried because anyone who pays any attention to health care knows exactly what is about to happen to the system, to the market and to individuals, and they don't want to be blamed for it so they're trying to see if they can take us off the cliff with them and we aren't going to abide by it," Schatz said.

They've been spending the last seven years telling people they're supposed to hate the Affordable Care Act, but they never got around to explaining why they are supposed to hate it. The fact is, the only way to extend affordable coverage to the population is to do what the ACA does: get everybody into the pool, require community rating (i.e. don't charge more to sick people), and provide subsidies for low income people and families. There's no other way. The ACA is something of a Rube Goldberg contraption, but that's because Congress is unwilling to pass the right solution, which is:

Universal, comprehensive, single payer national health care.

UPDATE: I commend to your attention Kevin Drum, who also asks why Republicans hate Obamacare. He notes that when polled, people like all the individual pieces of it; they also like it much better if it's called Kynect or the Affordable Care Act. Quoth Mr. Drum:

So why the continued rabid opposition to Obamacare? It's not because the government has taken over the health care market. On the contrary, Obamacare affects only a tiny part of the health insurance market and mostly relies on taking advantage of existing market forces. It's not because the benefits are too stingy. That's because Democrats kept funding at modest levels, something Republicans approve of. It's not because premiums are out of control. Republicans know perfectly well that premiums have simply caught up to CBO projections this year—and federal subsidies protect most people from increases anyway. It's not because everyone hates what Obamacare does. Even Republicans mostly like it. The GOP leadership in Congress could pass a virtually identical bill under a different name and it would be wildly popular. In the end, somehow, this really seems to be the answer:

Republicans hate the idea that we're spending money on the working class and the poor. They hate the idea that Barack Obama is responsible for a pretty successful program. They hate the idea that taxes on the wealthy went up a bit. They hate the idea that a social welfare program can do a lot of good for a lot of people at a fairly modest price.
What kind of person hates all these things?