Here at RedState, we’ve already spilled a lot of digital ink discussing how Obamacare has fallen well short of expectations. Now, we have one more story for that long list. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projection, the ACA will only meet 65% of its 2015 coverage goal. Per The Weekly Standard:

When the Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress in 2010 without a single Republican vote, the CBO said that the unpopular overhaul would lead to a net increase of 26 million people with health insurance by 2015 (15 million through Medicaid plus 13 million through the Obamacare exchanges minus 2 million who would otherwise have had private insurance but wouldn’t because of Obamacare).

Fast-forwarding five years, the CBO now says that Obamacare’s tally for 2015 will actually be a net increase of just 17 million people (10 million through Medicaid plus 11 million through the Obamacare exchanges minus 4 million who would otherwise have had private insurance but won’t, or don’t, because of Obamacare).

In other words, Obamacare is now slated to hit only 65 percent of the CBO’s original coverage projection for 2015.

There are several reasons to explain why Obamacare has failed to meet expectations. For one, people aren’t thrilled with the high costs of healthcare and limited doctor networks for the plans under the law have left people seriously considering paying the fine (read: tax) rather than signing up. Even though that penalty will continue going up over the next few years, it’s still cheaper than having to pay for even the most rudimentary plans under the ACA.

Also worthy of noting in that Weekly Standard article is the fact that most of the Obamacare coverage gains come from people being dumped into Medicaid, as opposed to private insurance. This is, again, exactly as the CBO projected.

In other words, Obamacare is progressing along about as smoothly as you’d expect for a government takeover of such a large portion of our economy, which is to say, not very well. I know I sound like a broken record, but we still need to be fighting for a full repeal of the law, even though it’s all but certain Obama would veto it. We cannot fix this mess with just a few small tweaks.