By Rep. Kevin McCarthy - November 13, 2013

As President Obama's health care law continues to roll out upon the country from Washington, more and more Americans are coming to some simple conclusions.

First, the individual mandate was a bad idea before and even more dangerous now, because it is forcing people to choose health care they do not want, cannot afford, and isn’t right for themselves and their families.

Second, the president’s credibility is continuing to crumble, as independent news sources have confirmed that he intentionally misled the American people about whether they can keep their insurance under his law.

All of this was predictable. All of this was avoidable. And that is what guided our legislative principles last month when House Republicans proposed something very simple: suspend Obamacare’s individual mandate for just one year. We offered the one-year suspension as a common-sense compromise with our Democratic colleagues, who instead preferred to plow ahead full speed with the mandate. Unfortunately, politics trumped policy, and now the law is upon us.

But now -- in a reversal from just one month ago -- Democrats are calling for suspending the individual mandate itself or the mandate’s tax penalty. One Democratic senator has even introduced legislation to allow Americans to keep their current plans. These ideas would be an improvement and are welcome news. We have no pride of ownership over the idea to suspend the mandate; we’re just glad to have more friends in the cause.

Let me be clear: We applaud our colleagues for being willing to find a better way to improve America’s health care. It can be a breakthrough, but only if we remain jointly focused on the central goal of improving health care, not damaging it.

The simple truth is that the implementation of Obamacare has hurt Americans and their health care more than it has helped.

Inexcusable technical issues with the marketplace website rendered it useless to almost everyone who logged on. Even the security of the site was never properly certified, risking a breach of extensive personal health and financial information. It’s truly shocking just how few people have successfully used the site -- and galling how the White House has disguised these inconvenient facts.

But the problem goes deeper. While this broken site hardly engenders confidence that the federal government can be trusted with our personal health care, a website can be fixed with time and competence. The real problem is the barrage of revelations in recent weeks that have Americans across the country questioning the credibility and competence of the president and congressional Democrats.

From the very beginning, the president made a fundamental promise to the American people about his signature health law: “If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” Now, millions of Americans are receiving notice from their insurance provider that their plan has been canceled. Worse, the president and his administration knew from the beginning this promise wasn’t true. Yet he continued, countless times, to push this falsehood on the American people.

The president revisited his broken promise recently in Boston by telling those who had their plans canceled, “Just shop around in the new marketplace, that’s what it’s there for.” It’s hard to shop in a market you cannot enter. Even worse, Americans have been shocked by just how much these new plans will cost. Americans are being forced to buy more expensive plans that don’t offer the care they want or the doctors they need, while leaving behind plans that had already worked for them.

The facts are clear. Obamacare is failing the American people. Perhaps one can say that in the end, House Republicans were right -- just a month too soon. But more important than being right is now getting it right with our Democratic colleagues by working to roll back these negative consequences. There’s still time. We can move right away, and we are ready to work with them to make it happen. Let’s get to work.