Keller @ Large: Happy Ending Or Nightmare?

BOSTON (CBS) - Let's face it, we are not a nation of people who crave loose ends. As a general rule, we like stories that come to a tidy end, and hate sports events that end in a tie.

Toss in our craving for immediate results and ever-shorter attention spans, and you have a culture that is not big on long, drawn-out sagas with ambiguous outcomes.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

Keep that in mind as you fend off all efforts from the yammering classes of the left and right to convince you that Obamacare can now be officially declared a success or a failure.

The president and his critics can (and surely will) debate that one until they turn blue, but it won't do them – or us – any good.

As best I can tell, here are the known facts: millions of people who were previously uninsured now have health coverage, and thus are protected from the financial calamity that can befall an uninsured person with a major medical problem. And a number of people who did have insurance are now paying less for it thanks to subsidies.

For all of them, Obamacare is a success, for now at least.

But millions of others are getting the short end of the stick.

They're stuck with insurance that's more expensive than what they had, they work for businesses who can't cover newly-mandated costs, they're seniors losing chunks of their Medicare Advantage benefits, and so on. The ranks of the losers will swell once anticipated double-digit rate hikes kick in next year.

The truth is, we won't know for a long time if this story has a happy ending, or winds up a widespread nightmare.

That won't stop pols from both sides from claiming otherwise, of course.

If they really cared about the truth, they'd probably be in another line of work.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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