“Aides say that growing numbers of Americans signing up for health insurance will defend those benefits”
It’s the oldest trick in the book. Get as many mouths at the trough as possible, then when you pull it away all the squealing pigs will fight you.
Except... I think the trough is going to be filled with stuff that acutely disappoints. Doctors don’t YET have to accept these plans, and would rebel en masse if they were ordered to (not to mention Constitutional protections).
Promise them, "If you like your plan, you can keep it."
I don’t think young people will ever sign up unless they are already in the system.
Well, there's a little problem with that. A couple of them, actually.
The first is that the website's functional problems (to "customers") are merely a surface scratch. The fatal wound(s) are the security vulnerabilities. The problems were built in right from the start, and now there are half a BILLION lines of code written (with even more yet to come just to complete the site.) This cannot be fixed easily, and these people are presently too trapped in what they've created, or are too ignorant, or too arrogant, or more likely all the above, to understand how bad it is. Any person or business entity with an account on healthcare.gov should assume any "data" they gave to healthcare.gov is in the hands of hackers. I'd give you 50/50 odds the Iranians have it, and I'm sure simple theft is the least of their intentions.
Worse, these fools apparently don't understand that the more people who sign up, the greater the security disaster. (Most of) the "pigs" who would squeal at the loss of their health care are going to be even more upset when they find out what identity thieves will do to them.