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http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21402-the-aca-and-americas-health-care-mess
While it was enacted in 2010 without a single Republican vote, the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a. “Obamacare,”
was built model first proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation
in the 1990s and implemented by Republican Governor Mitt Romney in
Massachusetts in 2006. The ACA extends the public safety net to more of
the working poor but otherwise keeps the private health insurance system
intact. Rather than replacing the private system—and far from the
“government takeover of health care” its critics claim—it provides
subsidies for individuals to buy private health insurance through
state-level “exchanges.”
As social policy, the ACA is a qualified failure. The expansion of
Medicaid and mandates for individuals to buy subsidized private
insurance will expand health insurance to an additional 30 million
people. Regulations establishing minimum standards for coverage and
barring exclusions for pre-existing conditions will improve coverage for
many. On the other hand, by maintaining the existing system of
for-profit medicine and private insurance, the ACA does little to rein
in out-of-control cost growth while leaving millions without coverage.
We can hope that the ACA’s strengths and its failures will soon pave the
way for a rational universal system such as single payer health care.
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