The other big priority, as Obama promised in his NBC interview last week, is to take care of the millions of people whose individual health insurance policies are being canceled because they don’t meet Obamacare standards. And there’s no easy way for the administration to do that without unraveling the law in other ways…

But that’s not what all Democrats want — the White House has been silent on it, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been noncommittal on whether Landrieu will ever get a vote. The reason, health care experts say, is that the bill could actually hurt more people than it helps. Insurers have based their pricing on the ability to get all of those people into Obamacare plans — so if they don’t switch, the prices could go haywire for everyone else in those plans.

Just try explaining that in a non-tone-deaf way, though, if you’re on the White House communications team — or a Democrat in a close re-election race.

“If you allow the healthy enrollees to stay out in their old policy, the insurers lose money and the program falls apart. There is no free lunch here,” said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT health economist who consulted on both Obamacare and the Massachusetts health care reform law.