Our Health Policy Matters

Last week, I was talking with a new acquaintance about health and mental health policy. He was a successful businessperson, smart, very well educated, and well-informed about public policy.  Like most of us, he follows the news about Obamacare closely.  And he has strong opinions about it.  But I realized as we talked that there were things he thought he knew about Obamacare that were not actually true.  But we both had heard them many times before. So here are five often-repeated “facts” about Obamacare that you, too, have probably heard, and happen to be wrong. 1.  The Affordable Care Act was supposed to reduce health care costs significantly.  Untrue – when the Affordable Care Act was passed, the Congressional Budget Office projected that it would cost more than $1.2 trillion over ten years.  After the Supreme Court decision in 2012, CBO lowered its projection to under $1.2 trillion.  (When these numbers were updated ...

Last week, I was talking with a new acquaintance about health and mental health policy. He was a successful businessperson, smart, very well educated, and well-informed about public policy.  Like most of us, he follows the news about Obamacare closely.  And he has strong opinions about it.  But I realized as we talked that there were things he thought he knew about Obamacare that were not actually true.  But we both had heard them many times before. So here are five often-repeated “facts” about Obamacare that you, too, have probably heard, and happen to be wrong. 1.  The Affordable Care Act was supposed to reduce health care costs significantly.  Untrue – when the Affordable Care Act was passed, the Congressional Budget Office projected that it would cost more than $1.2 trillion over ten years.  After the Supreme Court decision in 2012, CBO lowered its projection to under $1.2 trillion.  (When these numbers were updated ...