[vinceguidry]

It's a common misconception that you have to define law precisely in order for it to be useful. States of affairs are rarely fixed with one law, many times it's useful to proceed with the poor law that you can get passed as opposed to no law at all, and spend another season building up political will to pass a better one. The countless piracy acts that keep getting thrown at us every few years get slightly weaker as the content industry just tries to wedge a foot in the door.

Obamacare was intended to be like this. Legislators knew it was going to get attacked the second the ink was dry, so they built in a bunch of clauses making it extremely difficult to 'simply repeal'. New health care legislation almost certainly has to build on top of Obamacare, enough political capital can't possibly be raised to do anything else.