The fallout of Obamacare in 2015
By Brian Taylor
Most of the accusations by opponents of the Affordable Care Act have proven true. Passed by a totally partisan vote in 2010, its popularity has never exceeded 50 percent, and today stands at a 37 percent approval rating.
Thanks to Johnathan Gruber, the now infamous (and rich) healthcare consultant from MIT, the truth about the strategy behind the ACA has been revealed. Honestly, it came as no surprise to most, as opponents screamed for years about the flaws that were inherent in the law and how it was sold. Unfortunately, the media had no interest in listening until, almost embarrassingly now, they have been forced to. Yet the left has supporters that still are trying to provide cover for an administration that, incredulously, is trying to distance itself from Gruber, pretending that he was an incidental, unimportant part of the sausage- making process of legislation. As Democrat Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House of Representatives, said, she didn’t know who he was.
Gruber’s comments are striking only in that they reveal what many knew all along. The bill was not about bending healthcare costs, but about extending insurance coverage to millions without it, via a redistribution of resources. No matter that along the way, millions would lose their already existing and satisfactory coverage in exchange for paying more for lower quality coverage, in order to pay for those who were newly anointed with coverage.
To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case of whether the subsidies given to people through the federal exchanges are legal. The law was written intentionally (as pointed out numerous times by none other than Mr. Gruber), that these subsidies would only be available to those who enrolled through state-run exchanges. The purpose of this language was to force the states indeed to set up these exchanges. If not, as Gruber pointed out, their residents would be ineligible for subsidies.
Most states declined and left the process to the federal government, much to the administration’s chagrin. Their
weak argument now is that of course it was intended to include those enrolled through federal exchanges; -it was merely a typo in the law that apparently nobody read beforehand “to see what was in it.”.
With the mid-term elections behind us, it seems clear that Obamacare was in fact the campaign issue that many thought it would be, and that Democrats had hoped had subsided as an issue. With it comes the rhetoric about what it will all mean and how a Republican Congress addresses it. Repeal surely is out of the question as long as Obama is in office, but it isn’t unreasonable to expect that certain provisions, such as the medical device tax and the employer mandate, may be peeled off and rolled back.
The bigger challenge, I think, to survival of Obamacare is how the Supreme Court rules in June 2015. It could strike at the very foundation of the ACA and precipitate a comprehensive review and reworking of solving the healthcare dilemma. Republicans better be prepared to offer some palatable and reasonable solutions as alternatives.
The good news is that perhaps there is a small chance that we can have an honest healthcare debate and produce a truly bipartisan solution. In my view, that is the only way a law of this scope has a chance of survival.
It is undeniable that many individuals have been helped by pieces and parts of the ACA, But at what cost? What is too often missed, by both defenders and critics, is the obvious fact that for every person previously without coverage that has been helped, there are perhaps 5-10 more that have been hurt. Most of the individuals and families suffering the most damage (through higher deductibles, higher premiums, loss of company funded insurance, reduction in hours) are in the middle class that this administration claims as their highest priority. The Laws of Unintended Consequences seem to be forever lost on this community organizer, but then again, maybe not so much as we might think.