This is a few days old, but it’s still instructive on how those who have supported ObamaCare will defend it now that premiums have skyrocketed out of sight. Slate headlines the Helaine Olen piece as “ObamaCare’s Bill is Due,” but don’t expect that bill to include any admissions that the reform went the wrong direction or should be shelved entirely. In fact, Olen starts off with a bit of a straw man to ridicule the side that she now admits was proven correct:

On one side—you don’t need me to spell out which—the Affordable Care Act was demonized. It was going to bankrupt the health care system; destroy the United States’ reputation for excellent service; steal you away from your doctor; and, by some means never quite explained, lead us straight to communism. Today, subsidized health care premiums and an end to pre-existing condition exclusions; tomorrow, Stalin and FEMA detention camps located in semisecret parts of Texas. You know how it goes.

Er … no, not really. The lunatic fringe that discuss FEMA camps aren’t using ObamaCare for that argument, and even if they were, they’d be no more germane to ObamaCare criticism than Illuminati paranoids discussing monetary policy. It’s a cheap way to throw a sop to Slate’s audience, a wink and a nudge that says I’m one of you! before explaining the results of the ACA — among which actually included the loss of preferred providers despite Barack Obama’s promises.

In fact, Olen goes on to explain that the ACA is currently bankrupting the health-care system, which is why insurers are having to ask for massive increases in premiums:

The problem is simple. As Trudy Lieberman reported this month in Harper’s, the ACA made a decent stab at solving the problem of Americans lacking insurance. Unfortunately, the bargain struck to get the bill to a point where lobbyists for the hospital, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries to sign on, or at least not fight it, did not adequately address the issue of overall medical costs.

And that’s where the consumer comes in. Someone is “it,” the party paying the bill. And that “it” is increasingly you, whether you receive insurance on the exchanges or from an employer.