Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat have both written pieces recently arguing that the failure of the Affordable Care Act could lead towards a more liberal form of universal health care. The idea goes that if HealthCare.gov doesn’t become feasible, people will begin looking at which parts of the law were successful and which weren’t. The Medicaid expansion has thus far been a success in the states that have expanded. Government-run online marketplaces? Not so much. That’s a problem for conservatives, because many of their leading health care plans would require those online marketplaces. If those are deemed a failure, what’s their next proposal? Meanwhile, the liberal fantasy – Medicare for all – is much closer to the Medicaid expansion. The appetite for universal healthcare would still exist and now single payer would be the clear solution. Klein and Douthat both see this as a distinct possibility. Is it?

There are a couple of reasons to be skeptical.

First, if Obamacare fails, it’s going to hurt Democrats badly. Time and time again House and Senate Democrats have thwarted government opposition to Obamacare. They’ve refused to defund or delay the law or the individual mandate. Republicans, of course, have done the opposite. If the exchanges don’t work, Republicans will earn major points with voters. This has been the leading battle for years now. Democratic candidates will have a lot of trouble fighting off attacks that they stuck with a partisan, unpopular law only to watch it collapse under its own weight once enrollment began. Like Klein, I don’t believe many things affect elections. This would.

Second, Klein and Douthat’s argument assume that Americans will be able to distill HealthCare.gov’s failure from the other parts of the law. Will they understand that the Medicaid expansion succeeded while the complex public-private partnership that created the exchanges failed? It’s not clear. Klein is one of the leading proponents that Americans don’t follow politics closely. They don’t know what’s going on in D.C. Obamacare’s failure would be a big story. But would it be big enough for people understand the causes of it? The CBO projects that only seven million people will sign-up on the exchanges next year. They will all undoubtedly see the website’s issues, but the vast majority of people will never try to login to HeathCare.gov. They may hear that Obamacare failed without knowing the causes.

Third, many Americans may see Obamacare’s failure as symbolic of government’s inability to regulate the health care market. Whatever the causes, Americans may conclude that getting government involved in the health insurance industry is a bad idea. They won’t spend much time thinking about why Obamacare failed and simply decide that enough government disruptions in the health care market.

Klein and Douthat’s argument is not impossible. Maybe Americans will be clamoring for single payer if the exchanges fail. But there are also a number of reasons why that won’t be the case. Klein and Douthat give Americans a lot of credit for understanding the root causes of Obamacare’s failure, evaluating the competing conservative and liberal health care ideas and using the Obamacare analysis to guide their decision-making. I believe most Americans will think more simplistically and see Obama’s failed law as nothing more than a failed program epitomizing the government’s inability to regulate the health care market. Let’s hope that the administration can get the exchanges working and we never have to find out.