On the Saturday before ObamaCare launches, Saturday Night Live aired a skit that President Obama—a big fan of the kind of hipness associated with the show—couldn’t have enjoyed very much: it was a hilarious opening that featured the President (brilliantly played by Jay Pharoah) trying to sell ObamaCare to a reluctant public.

It will have you in stitches. Best Moment (and the competition was stiff): an “average American” played by “Breaking Bad” star Aaron Paul tells what happened to a friend of his because he got sick and there was no ObamaCare:

"He did what any of us would have done," Paul, playing an "average American," tells the crowd. "He started cooking meth. And soon it wasn't just meth, it was murder. And not regular murder, he blew half a guy's face off."

Ed Morrissey finds the SNL skit significant:

I think the biggest takeaway from this is that the “hip” audience sees ObamaCare as a ripe target for satire, especially its rollout.  Needless to say, if the train wreck wasn’t apparent to everyone now, the opening skit last night would have been all Ted Cruz and hysterical Republicans.  That may not be a “cultural shift,” as some on Twitter surmised, but it’s not a good sign for Democrats who expect pop culture to always have their backs.

I don’t want to overestimate the intelligence of our contemporary pop culture, but the skit was not good news for the President.

On a more sober note, the Wall Street Journal today has an editorial on the arrival of ObamaCare tomorrow. It begins:

The Affordable Care Act opens for business on Tuesday, a testament to liberal perseverance if not wisdom. The plan was dragged across the finish line in 2010 with only Democratic votes but no democratic consensus, and then survived a wave election, an historic constitutional challenge, the 2012 campaign and durable popular opposition.

This half-decade political debate has also been a period of convulsive change for the one-sixth of the economy that the law is supposed to "reform." So ObamaCare's start is a moment to step back from the day-to-day Washington scrum and take stock of American health care as this liberal vision unfolds.

The editorial paints a grisly picture of how badly the system is likely to function, starting tomorrow. But it also offers a warning: if you think that ObamaCare will collapse of its own weight, you don’t know how hard the Department of Health and Human Services, using “any regulatory means necessary,” will fight to save it.

So for those of us who fear what ObamaCare will do to our nation, enjoy the SNL skit, but don’t think this battle is over.