There was a lot of news coming out of the
Obama Administration last week related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The
Administration could certainly use some positive news about it and they did
their best to capitalize and strategically coordinate the messages to the
public. Quite honestly, I’m not sure how much was real news and how much was
just an attempt to re-position their overall strategy with the general public.
They have a lot of work to do.
First, was
the announcement that over 7.5 million individuals used the different health
insurance exchanges to purchase health insurance for themselves or their
families. This number miraculously
exceeded the moving
target established to define the success of the
implementation. After the disastrous
launch and rollout in October last year, this is certainly some positive news.
Despite many questioning what the numbers actually mean, the Administration used
the opportunity to spike the ball a few times while announcing it.
Second was
the announcement that Kathleen Sebelius was going to leave her post as Cabinet
Secretary at the Department of Health of Human Services. This wasn’t any
surprise to most as she had stayed on much longer than many expected and as an
added benefit she could now be used as the fall-guy/gal to blame future
Obamacare problems and missteps.
As an added
benefit, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation
(JCT) updated their numbers regarding the potential impact the ACA is having
(will have) on the number of uninsured and the deficit. Despite all the changes
in the law and the economy since it was enacted in 2010, the CBO/JCT estimate
over 12 million individuals are financially protected with health insurance
today that wouldn’t have been otherwise. By 2017 that number will rise to over
26 million. Additionally, while they can’t specifically quantify the number,
they still believe the ACA will continue to have a positive impact on the
deficit over the next 10 years.
I’m still
not as sold on the Obamacare idea as I once was and you can certainly debate
the meaning of some of the numbers being thrown around. But, it’s the only defined strategy we have to
work with right now. Until we have another real option (and just repealing the
law with no replacement is not a real option) we’re going to need to fix what
needs to be fixed and move on while we sort through the meaning of the numbers
to see what they are telling us.
In the
meantime, the Obama Administration should probably hold off from spiking the
ball in victory any time soon. We still don’t know if this thing is going to
work.
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