President Barack Obama announced this month that 20 million Americans now have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
The president used a March 3 event in Milwaukee to tout the law’s success and attack Republicans for their continued opposition, noting Congress has unsuccessfully voted to repeal it about 60 times.
Is the Affordable Care Act working? Is it time for Republicans to give up the effort to repeal and replace the health insurance law? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in.
JOEL MATHIS
Is Obamacare working? Don’t ask me. Ask Brent Brown.
He’s the Wisconsinite who wrote Obama, confessing he’d not voted for the president but thanking him anyway for getting the Affordable Care Act passed.
“I have a ‘pre-existing condition’ and so could never purchase health insurance,” Brown wrote. “Only after the ACA came into being could I be covered. Put simply … I would not be alive without access to care I received due to your law.”
If the rhetoric of the Republican Party is to be believed, Brown hates freedom. So, too, do the 20 million people who have gained access to health insurance who didn’t have it before.
Forgive the sarcasm: It’s a response to the smug anti-Obamaism of folks on the right who keep waving away this little truth: There are millions of people who are much better off — alive, even — with the Affordable Care Act in place than there would be without it. While Republicans spent the last half-decade moaning about the “tyranny” the law represents, trying over and over and over again in Congress to repeal the act, Brown simply lived.
Sometimes, government does useful things that make our lives better. This is one of them.
By the way: The rate of health care costs has slowed considerably. The Altarum Institute last month reported that such costs rose by 1.1 percent in 2015 — the lowest annual rate increase since the institute began tracking in 1990. And the Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that repealing the act would increase the federal government’s deficit by $98 billion by 2025.
Now it’s true: Obamacare isn’t perfect. Certainly, its error-plagued rollout was nothing to write home about. And some of us on the left still fantasize about truly socialized medicine — not this half-measure that sends more cash to insurance companies. What’s more, the program doesn’t help everybody: Specialty drugs that treat rare, complex conditions, which were already expensive, continue to skyrocket in costs.
But Republicans offer no real alternative. Me? I’ll stick with the policy that enables Brent Brown and many others to live.
BEN BOYCHUK
Insuring the uninsured was a goal of the Affordable Care Act, but not the only goal. President Obama promised the law would save most families $2,500 a year in premiums, but that’s not what’s happened.
In fact, health insurance premiums have continued to increase every year since the law took effect. This year, according to a McKinsey & Company analysis, premiums across all tiers — bronze, silver, gold and platinum — increased an average of 10-13 percent for the lowest-cost plans.
If you’re an individual who doesn’t get insurance through your employer, well, you know how the law has worked out. Faced with five-figure annual premiums and deductibles, many have chosen to pay the individual mandate’s tax penalty instead.
Oh, and let’s not forget, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Is some insurance better than no insurance? Sure. But if costs remain unchecked, many families may find themselves uninsured anyway — or, worse, forced onto Medicaid with its terrible coverage and dwindling network of providers.
What’s missing in all of this is any sort of viable market alternative. The U.S. health care market is heavily regulated and distorted by government subsidies. Barriers to entry are high and competition is poor.
My Manhattan Institute colleague Avik Roy in January published the first of a series of policy briefs that lay out a free-market alternative to Obamacare.
Roy begins with the question: “Why isn’t there an Uber of health care?” Why hasn’t the health care industry seen the same sort of innovation that has boosted quality and driven down costs in just about every other sector of the economy?
The biggest reason, of course, is that most health care costs aren’t borne by consumers. A third party — an employer, the state — pays for the vast majority of expenditures.
Roy says it’s worse than that: “We now have ‘ninth-party’ health care — third-party payment of third-party payment of health care services.” Patients have no idea what they’re paying for or why.
Policymakers need to focus on putting consumers in control of health care costs. Clearing the thicket of regulations that give insurers an outsized role in the marketplace would be a good place to start.
This piece was originally distributed by Tribune News Services
This piece originally appeared in Tribune News Service