Affordable Care Act – revisit ad absurdum

Health care is just too attractive a topic for some politicians. So here we go again. Former President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act, is the law of the land. It was born in a 900-plus page bill passed by Congress in 2010. For the next nine years, it underwent a relentless attack, for the mainly uninformed and polemically based, to dismantle or discredit it. Once again, we have to “get real” about health care for the nation. The “Obamacare” is not that “terrible “Obamacare”” or “socialism” but a comprehensive attempt to find ways to provide health care for everyone and to arrest the rise in health care costs for the patient and for the government. And health care is not simple. We had an inkling of this fact in the attempt to keep our hospital open in 2013. There is no way to write a 20-page comprehensive health care law, and you can’t conjure it up overnight.

Back in 2014, I wrote a letter to the editor to the effect that the whole issue is too complex and why duplicate another large investment in man hours, including those for Congress and its support staff. My preferred path was to allow the dust to settle and tune “Obamacare” to make it perform more efficiently, improving it for patients, making it universally available and affordable.

Voiding “Obamacare” would be a grave error. The health care law is made up of 10 titles or functions. In about 20% of the health care law, Title 10 lays out coverage provisions. A huge part lies in Title II, and therein lies health care for a huge number of people – Medicaid. So when you talk about repealing “Obamacare”, be careful about what you’re aiming to do. There’s that other 80% of the health care law, the other nine Titles that provide standards and benefits as well. Spare us all the consternation of a redo. Government, just do your job.

John Watson