It is a falsity the White House doesn’t want to give up. They complain that Republicans aren’t as cooperative as they were when the Medicare Part D prescription drug plan had a rocky start. The reason they couldn’t get single-payer, though, is that there weren’t enough Democratic votes for it. (PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes) 
 
 They complain that Republicans are refusing, in the words of Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, “to have an actual debate about the law’s trade-offs.” This is especially rich given that the president has steadfastly refused to acknowledge some of the most significant trade-offs, namely that some people will lose their current insurance and have to pay more in the exchanges. Instead, he tweaked his dishonesty for a different positive spin: “For the fewer than 5 percent of Americans who buy insurance on your own, you will be getting a better deal.” Not if they are forced — as many of them will be — to buy benefits they don’t need at a price they don’t want to pay. Which is why Republicans spent more time hammering Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about Obama’s “you get to keep your plan” line than the site troubles: They know it’s going to be a longer-lasting and more damaging story. The president got his law and it’s possible more people will be uninsured in 2014 than if it had never passed. (WATCH: 7 quotes on Obamacare glitches) 
 
 In a characteristically graceless note, in his health care speech in Boston Wednesday President Obama didn’t say anything about how his prior declarations had been misleading, at best. The way the ACA deals with people who had previously purchased crappy insurance on the individual market — and the way insurance companies have chosen to deal with these people — illustrates nearly every problem with attempting to design conservative, “market-based” ways to do things best done by straightforward government programs. The California Democrat and liberal lion asked Republicans to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats to improve Obamacare.
– The problems with the Affordable Care Act have at least accomplished this much for candidates on the left: They now should know what job No. 1 is going forward, writes Alex Pareene at Salon. "The immediate priority—and progressives running for office in 2014 and 2016 should practice saying this out loud—is fixing Obamacare." He's talking about more than tech trouble, however. They need to address what he sees as other fundamental flaws with the ACA, including "coverage gaps, the ways insurance companies will continue to exploit people and rip them off, and the potential for the cost burden on middle-class people to grow." It's important that liberals acknowledge the problems and propose tangible solutions—like, say, federalizing Medicaid for those who live in states that haven't embraced ObamaCare—rather than simply getting defensive about it, he writes. Along those lines, conservative Rich Lowry writes in Politico that he's already tired of the "whining" he's hearing from Democrats about the new law and why things aren't working. "They insisted on this particular law, at this particular time. They own it. They own every canceled policy, every rate increase, every unintended consequence and every unpopular intended consequence. It is theirs, lock, stock and two smoking barrels." Click for Lowry's full column. Or click for Pareene's full column.