Five Years On: Is Obamacare Working?

Obama Mocks GOP On Fifth Anniversary Of Affordable Care Act

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/03/25/obama-to-tout-health-care-law-on-fifth-anniversary/

"Obamacare: Where's The Train Wreck?"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/01/wheres-train-wreck.html

"The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/obamacare-and-hard-central-fact-of.html

2009 Harvard Study: 45,000 Americans Die Annually For Lack of Health Insurance

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/harvard-study-45000-americans-die.html

Republican Ruled States That Refuse To Expand Medicaid Are Despicable

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-can-state-government-deprive.html

GOP's Anti Medicaid Expansion Body Count, By State

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/gops-anti-medicare-expansion-body-count.html

When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March 2010, an open microphone famously caught Vice President Joe Biden calling it a “big f---ing deal,” said Steve Benen in MSNBC​.com. “Five years later, there’s little doubt that Biden was entirely correct.” Despite Republican predictions that the ACA would be a catastrophic failure, the law now universally known as Obamacare has extended insurance coverage to 16.4 million previously uninsured Americans and its cost-saving measures actually helped to rein in overall U.S. health-care spending. Health-care costs rose only 3.6 percent in 2013, the lowest increase since 1960. This week the Congressional Budget Office revised the projected 10-year cost of the law down to $1.2 trillion, 11 percent less than last year’s estimate. As for the ACA’s supposed job-killing impact, 2014 “was the best year for job creation since the ’90s.” Even though the “doomsayers have been wrong pretty much across the board,’’ said Jonathan Bernstein inBloombergView.com, polls indicate that the law remains unpopular. Only 40 percent support it, while 45 percent oppose it.

People oppose Obamacare because they are “feeling for themselves the law’s impact,” said Grace-Marie Turner in Forbes.com. It forced millions of Americans to give up doctors and cheaper insurance plans they liked. Plans purchased through Obamacare are deceptively costly, with huge deductibles averaging $5,081 for individuals in the cheaper “bronze” plans—42 percent more than average deductibles in plans sold outside the exchanges. As for the claim that Obamacare has slowed health-care inflation, the law’s supporters seldom mention that the slowdown began before the ACA was signed, as an effect of the recession, and that the rate is projected to start climbing again next year. The CBO’s initial estimate was that 26 million Americans would gain coverage under the ACA by 2015, said Jeffrey H. Anderson in WeeklyStandard.com. In what universe is “failing to hit a target by 10 million people ‘working even better than anticipated?’”

Obamacare is hardly perfect, said Sarah Kliff in Vox.com, but opinion polls are not a good measure of its effectiveness. Thanks to a relentless campaign of misinformation by conservative critics, the public remains shockingly ignorant of the law’s effects. In a recent Vox.com poll, for instance, only 60 percent were aware that Obamacare has increased the number of Americans with health insurance, and just 5 percent knew that projections of Obamacare’s 10-year cost have “consistently fallen.” More than three in four Americans either think the program is providing insurance to undocumented immigrants or aren’t sure if it does, even though the ACA expressly bars coverage to such immigrants.

“Republican lies” may be soiling Obamacare’s reputation, said Ron Fournier in NationalJournal.com, but “Democratic lies sold it” in the first place. Obama falsely promised that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it—period,” and downplayed the fact that his health-care plan “redistributes wealth” to the poor. Obamacare carries such “an enduring stigma” because it’s “an ugly reflection of today’s political culture.” Though the law is largely succeeding in its goals, said Ezra Klein in Vox.com, “the state of the Obamacare debate is depressing.” The ACA has become a central symbol in our country’s bitter debate over the role of government, so no amount of factual information will change the minds of either liberals or conservatives. Five years on, “the hardening of opinion is, if anything, worse.”