What do you know? The Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment deadline passed and Planet Earth didn’t spin off its axis.

Here’s another tidbit: The White House announced that it met its enrollment goal of 7 million Americans signed up for health insurance. Was the deadline glitch-free? No. But it came, it’s history and millions of Americans who didn’t have health insurance before have it now.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/obamacare-enrollment-deadline-special-enrollment-105239.html?hp=t1

Let’s remember, though, that critics will continue to declare the law a total failure. They’ll continue to assert that the president runs the most “lawless” administration in the history of the Republic. They’ll suggest the White House “cooked the books” on the ACA enrollment numbers. They’ll likely have more votes in Congress to seek to repeal the law.

President Obama asserted the following today in a White House Rose Garden ceremony: “There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived. Instead, this law is helping millions of Americans.”

We’ll need to remember that many of the ACA’s basic tenets came from Republicans. One of them, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, helped push through a health care law in the Bay State that became a significant model for the federal law that was enacted in 2010. Romney would try to distance himself from his own creation as he ran for president in 2012. The strategy didn’t work, as Americans re-elected Barack Obama.

Yes, some Americans got an extension on the deadline. Those are the folks who got hung up in the application process. The White House gave them a few extra days to finish it up.

Where this law goes from here remains a bit of an open question. It shouldn’t be repealed. It needs tweaking, just as Medicare needed it when it was created in 1965. That program has been a godsend to elderly Americans.

Of course, GOP efforts to toss out the ACA will continue. However, as more Americans sign up for health insurance and report back the positive impact of that coverage, there might be enough of a reaction that sends a stern message to ACA critics: Back off; the law is working.