The Affordable Care Act (ACA) – also known as “Obamacare” — was unpopular, unwise, and unsustainable when first enacted in March 2010. Another two years of stumbling implementation and real-world analysis; amid fierce battles in the courts, on Capitol Hill and throughout the states, provided further evidence of the health law’s flaws. The law is too costly to finance, too difficult to administer, too burdensome on health care practitioners, and too disruptive of health care arrangements that many Americans prefer.
The ACA is not just too misguided to succeed. It’s too dangerous to maintain and far too flawed to fix on a piecemeal basis. The law will jeopardize future economic growth, distort health care delivery, and limit access to quality care. It doubles down on our already unsustainable entitlement spending for health care, transferring dedicated funds from one overcommitted program (Medicare) to establish a new one – the subsidies the ACA provides consumers to buy insurance in government-run exchanges.