Monday, April 14, 2014

"It’s all over but the shouting: Obamacare is working."

"It’s all over but the shouting: Obamacare is working.":



GOP
So say Eugene Robinson.
That's the first line of Obamacare’s victory lap, his column for Tuesday's Washington Post.
As he says in the paragraph that immediately follows,
All the naysaying in the world can’t drown out mounting evidence that the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature domestic achievement, is a real success. Republican candidates running this fall on an anti-Obamacare platform will have to divert voters’ attention from the facts, which tell an increasingly positive story.
He reminds us of a number of facts in evidence
- 12 million people previously lacking coverage getting it this year
- 14 million more will be added by 2017
- without ACA 54 million Americans would have lacked health care, and ACA halves that.
There  is more to this column, and some thoughts of my own, beneath the cheese doodle.
Robinson reminds us that we are somewhat unique in not having moved to a single payer system, but instead having remained within the structure of the pre-existing system of private insurers.
But he frames it fairly clearly:
Many Republican critics of Obamacare know, but refuse to acknowledge, that the reforms are here to stay. Does the GOP propose to let insurance companies deny coverage because of preexisting conditions, as they could before the ACA? Does the party want to reimpose lifetime caps on the amount an insurer will pay? Tell young adults they can no "It’s all over but the shouting: Obamacare is working.":