WHO KNOWS when the mandate that American businesses offer health insurance to all employees will finally kick in?

We’re assured the president can wave his magic wand/executive pen and delay that mandate by a whole year-no matter what the law says, even the same law urged on the country and signed by the same president. So much for the rule of law, R.I.P.

Still, there must be a lot of businessmen out there who wish the president would delay the effects of this law even longer. Like forever.

But the law, formally the Affordable Care Act but now widely known and dreaded as Obamacare, is scheduled to kick in someday. Eventually. Maybe. And what will happen then is anybody’s guess. But there’s a lot of guessing going on in the papers.

Here in Arkansas, the allegedly Private Option is supposed to be on life support one day and sitting up in bed and taking nourishment the next. Even getting feisty. The latest news on that confused front (as of press time) is that the state’s Chamber of Commerce is worried about the costs ahead for businesses if the state doesn’t go along with Obamacare.

Deep in that story, carried just last Friday, were a few comments from the state’s Medicaid director that caught our eye. Like a nail. Andy Allison may have stumbled on the biggest problem with Obamacare. And, even more newsworthy, admitted it. Director Allison said that some businesses might not be able to pay for their workers’ health-care coverage “at the rate of generosity that the Affordable Care Act requires.”

That’s right, requires. So much for its being affordable.

Obamacare doesn’t let folks buy the kind of health insurance they think best for them, only the kinds of coverage government thinks best for them. What do mere people know? Best to leave such matters to Dr. Obama and his “experts”-no doubt the same kind of experts who designed the now notorious rollout of Obamacare.

These experts have decided on essential services that all Americans need, including old men who need insurance so they’ll have maternity care.Also, young women-or young men-who will need insurance to cover “rehabilitative services,” like speech therapy after a stroke.

Obamacare is a one-size-fits-all approach to health insurance that you’d never find in the formerly freemarket. It could have been designed as a collaborative effort between Rube Goldberg and Victor Frankenstein. How’d you like to entrust your health care to those two? Aided and abetted by the Hon. Barack Obama.

SURELY a better way to offer health-care insurance would be to have a variety of different plans on offer from a variety of different companies. So the buyer could choose among different plans, premiums and deductibles. Some plans would cover an encyclopedia of ailments, others just a bare minimum, and each would reflect that difference in their premiums and deductibles. That way, a body could pick out the best plan for her needs and her family’s. Without any kind of order from the government. You know, the way things were before Obamacare.

By all means, the best option right now would be to delay the Affordable Care Act, preferably forever.

There’s a word for that kind of approach to the continuing problem called Obamacare:

Repeal.

Editorial, Pages 10 on 01/27/2014