Our Health Policy Matters

There's a simple reason why (after more than a decade) Donald Trump and the Republicans have no plan to replace Obamacare. I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, some background. When the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it was an effort to expand health care coverage to a lot of people who needed it, while controlling their costs. It had certain key provisions, not the least of which were that people couldn't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, that all chronic diseases needed to be covered fairly, and lifetime coverage caps had to be lifted. The problem was that if you left matters to insurers to set insurance premiums based on what this would cost, the price of insurance would rise dramatically. So the government took a look at three different programs and ultimately put them together into one system. For people whose income was so low that they couldn't afford any real cost-sharing, the government expanded Medicaid. For elders...

Did Obamacare reduce access to care? That’s one of the arguments being made today by members of Congress who have rushed to judgment by voting for an inadequate replacement plan. It may surprise you that they call it “AHCA,” which sounds just like “ACA.” But it shouldn’t. Polling data always showed that “ACA” was a lot more popular than “Obamacare,” because many people did not know they were the same thing.  Republicans are hedging their bets – next election they hope they can tell a confused public that they were opposed to Obamacare but for AHCA. But back to the question.  Did Obamacare reduce access to care? That’s the argument made by the American Spectator, which counts among its editors the conservative, math-challenged, icons Jeffrey Lord, Ben Stein, and Grover Norquist. They argue that this is evident because of the 71 rural hospital closures since 2010 – approximately one per month. That’s pretty astonishing. Seventy-one rural hospital closures i...

Did Obamacare reduce access to care? That’s one of the arguments being made today by members of Congress who have rushed to judgment by voting for an inadequate replacement plan. It may surprise you that they call it “AHCA,” which sounds just like “ACA.” But it shouldn’t. Polling data always showed that “ACA” was a lot more popular than “Obamacare,” because many people did not know they were the same thing.  Republicans are hedging their bets – next election they hope they can tell a confused public that they were opposed to Obamacare but for AHCA. But back to the question.  Did Obamacare reduce access to care? That’s the argument made by the American Spectator, which counts among its editors the conservative, math-challenged, icons Jeffrey Lord, Ben Stein, and Grover Norquist. They argue that this is evident because of the 71 rural hospital closures since 2010 – approximately one per month. That’s pretty astonishing. Seventy-one rural hospital closures i...