The Affordable Care Act continues not to implode. In year two of the exchanges, more insurance companies are lining up to participate, which means more competition, lower prices and less waste. As Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn note today, thats exactly what the law promised. This follows earlier rounds of good news on Medicare costs and insurance premiums on the exchanges. In addition, although some people quit the exchanges due to churn in the insurance market, 7.3 million customers (of 8.1 million who signed up) stayed, paying their premiums as required. In other words, Obamacare is basically working as planned. As Klein pointed out, the good news isnt going to influence those who want to pretend Obamacare is a failure. In part thats because the Affordable Care Act is a huge law, and at any given moment, there are some good things happening in it and some bad things happening in it. If you run multiple articles every day on the problems and nothing on the broader trends, its easy to mislead your audience. Another reason is branding. The law doesnt function under the label Affordable Care Act (much less Obamacare); theres very little in the wave of recent changes to the health care industry that Americans will identify as Obamacare. That makes it extremely difficult for supporters to tout popular provisions. And it makes it easy for opponents to claim they support the popular parts while still hating Obamacare. Its a lot easier to claim that you favor a guaranty of insurance for people with pre-existing conditions but despise Obamacare than it is to claim that you like Medicare Part A but hate Medicare. Cohn and Klein both rap the conservative press for hyping Obamacares problems -- and potential problems -- while ignoring its successes. Thats fair in many cases. However, in addition to honest and sympathetic analysts such as Cohn and Klein, its also good to have honest skeptics (including my Bloomberg View colleague Megan McArdle and the Washington Examiners Philip Klein) pushing hard against the White House line. Obamacare was unlikely to be popular no matter what. But its success so far means it wont be repealed even if Republicans win unified control of the White House and Congress in 2016. As Cohn says, just because Obamacare is working well now doesnt mean it will continue to do so in the future. Nor does it mean that there is nothing about the program to criticize. And heres an important point that liberals often dont acknowledge: Its perfectly legitimate to oppose the law even if it works as planned. It may not be a government takeover of health care or socialism, but it is a major expansion of governments responsibilities, using regulation, taxes and market structure to transfer resources from wealthy Americans to those less wealthy. Like it or not, the ACA is a major success for the Obama administration and the historic 111th Congress that enacted it. The law has fulfilled a long-frustrated, high-priority liberal goal. Obamacare will continue to be unpopular, but its not going anywhere.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:30:00 +0000
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