Klein: Five Reasons ObamaCare *Could* Collapse

While I don’t believe that ObamaCare, soon after it finally launches next January, will quickly implode in the policy equivalent of a vast mushroom cloud, I do think its troubles will be acute, and its (slow-motion) collapse inevitable. 

The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein ably summarizes the Washington takeover’s current challenges in a recent piece, ObamaCare’s Looming Train Wreck

1. Young people may not sign up for insurance in sufficient numbers, causing premiums to rise for older, sicker folks — and thus causing a health insurance “death spiral.”

2. The law’s Medicare “cost controls” (really, rationing measures) may not work, causing higher deficits, which will put pressure on Congress to ratchet down on the rationing tighter — or begin to dismantle the law.

3. Employers may dump millions of their employees into the exchanges to save money — again, causing higher than promised taxpayer costs.

4. The exchanges (those bureaucratic “marketplaces” where people will go to get federal subsidies for their mandatory health insurance) could be beset by glitches and breakdowns — provoking public ridicule of the law and its authors.

5. The law could lead to overcrowding at doctors’ offices, as has happened in Massachusetts under “RomneyCare” — causing the public to view the Washington takeover as less than benign.

Klein concludes:

Obamacare has survived a Supreme Court challenge, multiple repeal attempts, and a presidential election. Now it is has to survive its own structural flaws.

Exactly.

But why wait to find out? The law has already failed to live up to its proponents’ promises. Let’s cancel ObamaCare and start over with a patient-centered system.

Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks’s Vice President for Public Policy. He leads the group’s efforts to reverse the Washington takeover of health care and replace it with a patient-centered system.

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