For Hillary Clinton and her supporters, this election cannot end soon enough. Her problem may be one part texting-pervert-email-thing, another part WikiLeaks, and two parts Obamacare trouble.

Enrollment for the 2017 Affordable Care Act began Tuesday. Each day, Coloradans and other Americans will learn firsthand about the massive 2017 health care hit. Clinton supports Obamacare, a sequel to the “Hillarycare” proposal she devised in the 1990s and did not get through Congress.

Obamacare will deliver an average 25 percent price hike nationally in 2017. The poor will get subsidies to offset the cost, and the rich don’t buy Obamacare. That makes it a massive middle class tax increase, appearing just before the election.

Gov. John Hickenlooper and other state politicians took bipartisan efforts to make Colorado a full participant in the Affordable Care Act. Here’s what it looks like in our state next year, as explained by the website of Colorado Health Insurance Brokers.

“Starting in 2017 approximately 20,000 consumers in Colorado will be losing their Humana and UnitedHealthcare individual health insurance policies .

“Rocky Mountain Health Plans will no longer sell individual policies . (with the exception of Mesa County residents on the Western Slope), so about 10,000 of its members will have to change plans. Finally, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans to discontinue its PPO plans in 2017, so over 62,000 of its customers will have to change plans in 2017.

“This adds up to about 92,000 people with individual plans from UnitedHealthcare, Humana Insurance, RMHP and Anthem who will need help finding other coverage for 2017 during open enrollment .”

In other words, a mess. Insurers cannot sell enough plans because they are too expensive. Those who buy them are not happy, given deductibles so high they seldom assist with health care costs.

President Barack Obama and Clinton relentlessly defend the health care act.

“Now we’re at 90 percent health insurance coverage,” Hillary Clinton said. “That’s the highest we’ve ever been in our country.”

Coverage is not the same as care. Health plans that don’t buy health care are useless as Bitcoins in an arcade.

The average estimated premium for families with bronze Obamacare plans will be $12,393 in 2017. Middle class consumers with Obamacare pay for expensive health care plans of nominal value, barring a catastrophic health event. They struggle to pay out-of-pocket for routine care, while pouring money into high-cost “Affordable Care Act” plans.

We cannot top the complaint expressed by former President Bill Clinton last month.

“So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world,” Bill Clinton said, describing the effect on the middle class.

He tried to walk it back, but truth had been told.

Polls were narrowing before the FBI’s bombshell last week. The launch of Obamacare enrollment, with one week left to vote, does not help Clinton’s cause.

The gazette editorial board

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