About 28 million Americans today have health insurance because of the provisions of the hyper-controversial Affordable Care Act. That’s the federal health care reform law that introduced online health insurance exchanges that have signed up more than 7 million people, allowed young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance and funded the expansion of Medicaid to nearly 7 million low-income people in 28 states.
It’s the law that has barred insurers from declining to cover someone because he or she has a pre-existing health condition — a provision made possible by the law’s unpopular individual coverage mandate.
It’s also the law that instantly invites outrage from those who oppose it. And now, the law’s opponents in the Republican Party and their allies who have repeatedly advocated for its repeal are newly emboldened by GOP victories in last week’s election.
Republicans will take control of the Senate, meaning repeated Obamacare repeal votes in the House might have life in more than one chamber. At the same time, the Supreme Court will consider a challenge to the law that could render a major part of it unworkable.
Add to that the release last week of year-old footage of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber discussing at an academic conference the “tortured way” in which the Affordable Care Act was written so it had a chance of passing a Congress resistant to voting for a bill designated a new tax.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber, who designed core components of Massachusetts’ health care reform law and the federal law that followed the Massachusetts model. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
The outrage from Obamacare opponents that followed was predictable — and manufactured.
“Your reaction to that? Are you as outraged as most of America?” Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade asked Maine Sen. Angus King, an Obamacare proponent, on Tuesday.
King didn’t come out of the confrontational interview looking so good, but he didn’t give in to the manufactured outrage. And he brought up the point that needs to be the focus of any discussion about the future of Obamacare.
“We’ve got 8 million people that have insurance now that didn’t before, and don’t lecture me about this, because 40 years ago, I had insurance. If I hadn’t had it, it caught a cancer that saved my life. If I hadn’t had insurance I’d be dead,” he told his interviewers.
“And if you guys are saying people shouldn’t have health insurance, I don’t know where you’re coming from,” he said later in the segment. “Are you that cruel? That is what you’re saying.”
In March, the Affordable Care Act will be five years old. In a few days, the law’s second open enrollment period will begin, allowing newly insured people to change their coverage plans and uninsured people to gain coverage and potentially qualify for subsidies.
Since the law’s major provisions took effect, the percentage of Americans without insurance has dropped to 13.4 percent from a high of 18 percent in 2013. More insurers are participating in the second year of Obamacare’s online insurance exchanges. And those benefiting from the new coverage provisions are paying premiums that are, on average, substantially lower than the pre-Obamacare cost of individual insurance plans.
The Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, and there are tweaks that could make the law more workable and, potentially, more popular. But as long as Obamacare is under existential threat, the law’s positive impact on millions of people’s lives will remain overlooked and the potential for it to work for even more people will be sacrificed.
