Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute shares with National Review Online readers his assessment of the Affordable Care Act’s achievements.
As Obamacare stumbles into its first full year of implementation, it leaves behind it a trail of broken promises. There was, of course, the promise that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” There was the equally emphatic “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” And let’s not forget the president’s promise that health-care reform would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.”
Now it appears another Obamacare promise is falling by the wayside: universal coverage.
From the beginning President Obama claimed that health-care reform “should mean that all Americans could get coverage.” And as recently as last November, the president was telling supporters that Obamacare had made “universal health care” a reality.
Of course, the actual reality was that Obamacare was never going to cover everyone. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that by 2023, Obamacare would still leave some 31 million Americans uninsured. That’s more people with insurance than we have today, no doubt, but far from universal coverage.
But now, the most recent enrollment data suggests that the health-care reform law will fall far short of even that modest achievement.
According to the administration, roughly 2.2 million people have signed up for health insurance through the program so far. An additional 3.9 million people have been enrolled in Medicaid. With 50 to 60 million uninsured Americans, by the most generous reading of the administration’s own numbers, Obamacare has at most covered 11 percent of the uninsured so far. Not a lot of bang for the buck.
Read the rest of the column to learn why even that 11 percent figure is overinflated.
