Viewpoints: Obamacare Anniversary Reflections; Rubio’s Replacement Plan; Deep CHIP Divide
A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.
Los Angeles Times:
On Obamacare's 5th Anniversary, Americans Are Starting To Feel Appreciation
Coverage of the Affordable Care Act's fifth anniversary Monday -- it was signed into law March 23, 2010--will undoubtedly focus on the gains in coverage and reductions in healthcare costs that have followed its rollout. To get the raw figures out of the way first, 16.4 million previously uninsured people now have insurance, the uncompensated care expenses of hospitals have fallen by more than 20%, and the rate of medical inflation is at a historic low. But a less-noticed trend also may be unfolding: Americans are beginning to appreciate that Obamacare has improved the nation's healthcare system, and their lives. (Michael Hiltzik, 3/23)
Bloomberg:
Obamacare's Happy And Healthy 5th Birthday
The law is working more or less as it was supposed to. The two goals of the Affordable Care Act were to expand coverage and to cut costs. The first part has worked as the drafters expected. Even though the effort has fallen short in states that have refused Medicaid expansion (which U.S. Supreme Court allowed them to do), the law has sharply increased the number of Americans with health insurance. The picture is murkier when it comes to costs. Health-care inflation has slowed considerably. It's just hard to know to what extent, if at all, Obamacare is responsible. (Jonathan Bernstein, 3/23)
The New York Times' The Upshot:
Now The Hard Part: The Rate Of Health Care Enrollment Seems Set To Slow
When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the law was expected to cover 21 million people in new insurance marketplaces by 2016. Despite the early problems, enrollments are essentially on track. But some prominent analysts worry that the pattern so far suggests that future enrollment could be sluggish. (Margo Sanger-Katz, 3/23)
McClatchy:
Feds Will Continue To Build On Obamacare Successes
[F]ive years ago this week, ... millions of Americans ... found hope in a new law, the Affordable Care Act. After years of dropped coverage, flimsy plans and barriers to care, everyone’s coverage has improved, because consumers have new protections, including those who get health insurance through their employers. They can’t be turned away because of pre-existing conditions; they can’t be dropped just because they get sick and insurance has to cover care that Americans count on, like trips to the emergency room, prescriptions and preventive services. And coverage is now affordable for millions of Americans. (HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell, 3/23)
The Washington Post:
Rubio’s Repeal And Replace
Every GOP candidate for president will run on repealing Obamacare. They will joust for the distinction of being the competitor who most dislikes the law. But for now, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the only top 2016 contender to offer a concrete alternative. ... In his book American Dreams, Rubio makes clear he favors an eventual phase-out of the exclusion for employer-provided health-care plans while transitioning everyone to a tax credit system. ... The effort to shift from third-party payers to a system in which health-care users are encouraged to shop for value is an essential part of controlling health-care costs, one that remains largely absent in the Obamacare system. (Jennifer Rubin, 3/23)
The New York Times:
Imagine President Ted Cruz
Of course, if you know [Sen. Ted] Cruz, or are familiar with how government is supposed to work, or with reality in general, you’ll find some of his imaginaries problematic, like abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, sealing the border, or “repealing every word of Obamacare.” “Imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage,” he said. But Mr. Cruz says he is a champion of personal liberty, too, and gay people who love each other are demanding their liberty to marry, just not in a way he finds acceptable. No data support Mr. Cruz’s claim that insurance premiums are “skyrocketing” under Obamacare. (3/23)
USA Today:
GOP Budgets Substitute Illusion For Substance: Our View
Both GOP budgets rely heavily on huge and politically unlikely spending cuts and bewildering gimmicks that don't begin to add up. Both proposals are more partisan wish lists than serious attempts to attack one of the nation's most serious problems. For example, both budgets would get $2 trillion of their more than $5 trillion in presumed savings over the next decade by repealing Obamacare. President Obama would veto that even if Congress managed to pass it. And killing the law before Republicans agree on what to do when millions of people lose their insurance policies is nonsensical. (3/23)
USA Today:
Sen. Enzi: Washington Must Live Within Its Means
Last week, Congress began the monumental task of confronting our nation's chronic overspending and exploding debt, which threaten each and every American. Make no mistake, our fiscal outlook is grim and has been ignored for far too long. But we have a profound moral responsibility to help taxpayers see the true picture of our country's finances. (Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., 3/23)
The New York Times' The Upshot:
Why Congress Is Having Trouble Governing
The [budget-setting] process is already exposing cleavages within the Republican caucus, between those who want to increase military spending and those who want to reduce deficits. If they succeed in arriving at a budget, it will strengthen their hand against President Obama’s health care law, environmental agenda and more, setting up standoffs in which the president wields his veto pen; if they don’t, it may well start to feel like 2013 all over again, with new showdowns over the debt ceiling or a potential government shutdown. (Neil Irwin, 3/23)
The Wall Street Journal:
Government Love ...
The Obama Administration often claims to be a careful steward of taxpayer dollars, and today’s punch-line is the collective $124.7 billion program called “improper payments.” That’s the Washington circumlocution for money that flows to someone who is not eligible, or to the right beneficiary in the wrong amount, or vanishes to fraud or federal accounting incompetence. ... The other two big culprits are traditional Medicare and Medicaid fee-for-service reimbursements. Compared to the earned-income credit, these are roaring successes with respective error rates of 12.7% and 11.6%. Then again, for a program as large as Medicare the error rate translates into $45.8 billion of annual waste, fraud or abuse. (3/23)
The New York Times' The Upshot:
Hospitals Are Wrong About Shifting Costs To Private Insurers
To hear some hospital executives tell it, they have to make up payment shortfalls from Medicaid and Medicare by charging higher prices to privately insured patients. How else could a hospital stay afloat if it didn’t? But this logic is flawed. (Austin Frakt, 3/23)
The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire:
Will ‘Doc Fix’ Include A Compromise On Children’s Health Insurance?
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee issued a news release Saturday expressing concern about provisions for children’s health insurance in the Medicare “doc fix” bill taking shape in the House. Media coverage of the children’s health program has largely focused on the length of the extension: Senate Democrats want a four-year extension, while a summary of the House agreement released Friday has a two-year reauthorization. But there are other, fundamental policy disagreements. (Chris Jacobs, 3/23)
USA Today:
Millennials Will Change Abortion Conversation
The conventional wisdom is that young people are strongly pro-choice. While it is not surprising that Baby Boomers and Gen Xers eventually grew more skeptical over time, when they were teenagers and young-adults, they too were all-in for abortion rights. But the demographic future of the United States is defying that conventional wisdom. (Charles C. Camosy, 3/23)
The Washington Post:
Raise The Smoking Age To 21
Forty-two million Americans still smoke. That is a much smaller proportion of the population than decades ago. But it’s still a public health disaster: Eighteen percent of adults put themselves and their families at risk of major and wholly preventable health problems. Education programs, changing social attitudes and higher tobacco taxes have pushed the smoking rate down, and cigarette bans have made the air a lot less foul in public places. But a new report articulates the logic behind an additional approach to fighting tobacco: Raise the age at which people can legally buy tobacco products to 19, 21 or even 25. Cities, states and even Congress should consider this option seriously. (3/23)
