If President Barack Obama wins reelection, he will focus on the implementation of fundamental elements of the ACAbeginning in 2014, including affordable insurance exchanges and a significant expansion of Medicaid, according to Dr. Aaron Carroll, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research.
But Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of “Why Obamacare is Wrong for America,” said the ACA will lead the country down the road to ineffective, expensive health care reform due to a large-scale centralization of power by the federal government, a move Republican candidate Gov. Mitt Romney opposes.
“It’s indisputable that the main aim of the ACA is to use the federal government’s regulatory, taxing and spending authority to reshape the health care system and move massive amounts of political power out of the hands of employers and private citizens and states to the federal government,” he said. “The government is now in the driver’s seat of the health care system … where it can direct what people do in terms of health care.”
Capretta said he thinks that shift in power could prove treacherous in its future consequences.