After The Supreme Court, Higher Cost and Unrealistic Timeline Will Force Major Changes
The Supreme Court has spoken, but problems built into the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have not been resolved by the decision and may have worsened. Even accepting the law’s assumptions about how the health system should be reformed, actually putting all the pieces in place is exceptionally expensive and difficult. If President Obama wins a second term, fiscal pressures and practical challenges will force him to scale back the unaffordable spending and slow down the unrealistic implementation timeline.
The next president will step into office with stubbornly high unemployment rates, slow economic growth, and the threat that Europe’s political and economic problems could drive us into a double-dip recession. The federal debt will soon be banging into the $16.4 trillion limit agreed to in the 2011 Budget Control Act. If Mr. Obama is president, Republicans will be in no mood to compromise on a package of spending cuts to go along with a debt increase.