The reason those actions were taken administratively, Democrats say, is that Republicans won’t cooperate on anything when it comes to the Affordable Care Act. “The fact that these changes had to be made through executive action rather than legislation just shows that everyone who’s being honest knows real fixes — efforts that are sincerely aimed at improving the law on its own terms — will never pass the House, and probably can’t count on real support or even thoughtful engagement from Senate Republicans, either,” says a Senate Democratic aide.

That’s true. Democrats are stuck. Of course, they might have thought of that when they passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote. Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for a brief moment — just 134 days in 2009 and 2010 — but now do not have the power to push bills through Congress on their own. So their decision to run over Republicans back then has come back to bite them now in the form of total GOP alienation.

There’s another explanation for the lack of Democratic fixes to Obamacare. For many, the Affordable Care Act is performing pretty much as planned. That includes the parts that are imposing terrible burdens on some Americans.