Obamacare A Successful Failure

Is the Affordable Care Act a failure? For some of us, the answer is simple: If you voted for President Obama, it must be a success. If you voted against the president, it must be a failure.  But if you think the legacy of Barack Obama is irrelevant to health care reform, the answer gets more complex.

Will the Affordable Care Act (ACA) achieve anything at all? Maybe. More Americans will own health insurance policies, especially if they are young and employed. Government spending on health care will decrease, despite the added cost of new computer programs and 17 different state insurance exchanges. Also, the financial burden of Medicare patients who have excessively costly diseases will move from the payor (the U.S. government) to the providers (us).

But these changes hardly qualify as reform. For patients, physicians and employers, none of these potential achievements has the slightest bearing on health care reform...