David Orentlicher - An Obamacare Status Report

In a forthcoming article, "Health Care Reform: What Has Been Accomplished? What Comes Next?," Dr. David Orentlicher discusses what we have learned and what we can expect from the Affordable Care Act. Enactment of the ACA in 2010 marked the most important accomplishment in U.S. health care reform in decades. Not since Medicare and Medicaid were passed in 1965 have so many Americans been given access to insurance coverage for their health care. Though the goal of universal health care was not achieved, ACA brought coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and provided assurance to the already-insured that if they lost their insurance through job loss or job change, they could turn to an expanded Medicaid program or a government-subsidized insurance policy for affordable coverage.

But while ACA has had a major impact on the U.S. health care system, its promise has been limited by its design. Rather than replacing the U.S. system with a more effective, less costly, and politically sustainable model, lawmakers decided to build on top of an inefficient, expensive, and politically insecure, existing model. A health care system that rested on a shaky foundation now has to carry more weight and that makes for an unstable future. Indeed, we are already starting to see some unraveling of ACA. For ACA to achieve its goals in a durable fashion, it should be replaced by a health care program that provides the same kind of health care coverage for all Americans rather than relying on a system that mixes employer-based insurance with individually-purchased private insurance and government-provided coverage.