An anticipated 22 percent increase in average insurance premiums within the Affordable Care Act exchanges has Democrats facing a new round of partisan Obamacare attacks.

This was all perfectly predictable, but it raises the question, once again, of what, if anything, Republicans will be willing to do to sand down the health care system’s rough edges once the election’s over.

Conservative writer Ramesh Ponnuru attributes the gridlock to the fact that President Obama isn’t really as open-minded about reforms to his health law as he claims to be.

For instance, Ponnuru claims, “Obama says that people who are having trouble buying insurance on Obamacare’s exchanges should receive more generous subsidies. The conservative alternative—relax the regulations that make the insurance unaffordable for them—is unacceptable to him because it would be a retreat from comprehensiveness.”

The real problem here is that Obama isn’t negotiating with Ponnuru, but with Congressional Republicans, who have only been willing to discuss significant health care reforms if they’re premised on repealing the entire health care law, and replacing it with something far less comprehensive.