Marathon Pundit: Chicago Tribune on ObamaCare: Stop digging, start over

That's the headline for an op-ed in today's Chicago Tribune: Stop digging, start over. The Trib all but calls for a repeal of ObamaCare.

On some level, then, the president plainly agrees with critics of ObamaCare, this page included, that the law needs to be rewritten: He and his administration keep rewriting its major components — remember the mandate that sizable employers offer coverage in 2014? — as practicalities and politics demand.

But in this country we don't change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn't want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that's what has to happen.

We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program ... under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.

What we don't understand is their reluctance to give that failure more than lip service. Many of the Americans who heard their president say Thursday that "we fumbled the rollout of this health care law" would have been pleased to hear him add: So we're admitting it. This law is a bust. We're starting over.