The Affordable Care Act (ACA): Was It Worth It?
There is a whole lot of soul searching in Democratic circles these days. Given the shellacking at the polls, it’s only natural to ask: Was the health reform bill worth it?
What did the Affordable Care Act (ACA) achieve that is worth $1 trillion of taxpayer money and benefit cuts for the elderly and the disabled, to say nothing of the Democratic losses on election day? Other than some insurance reforms that have been overhyped, members of Congress who voted for the ACA don’t seem to have a coherent answer. What about Kathleen Sebelius? No luck there. How about Rahm Emmanuel or David Axelrod? They don’t seem to know either.
So I turned to the blog sites of some academic health economists. If anybody can tell me why the ACA was worth it, surely they can.
Austin Frakt was reliably up to the task. The health care bill will insure the otherwise uninsured, he says, and with insurance they will acquire more health care and live healthier, longer lives. He writes:
The most important benefit of health reform: It was, is, good for health. The principal way in which health reform is good for health is that it provides access to insurance for tens of millions of Americans…. let’s just take insuring the uninsured. Many, many, many, many, many, many studies using the best statistical techniques find that insurance is good for health. Aaron and I have written about them numerous times, so I won’t do a literature review in this post. (Follow the “many” links provided above.)
In my opinion, Austin is cherry picking his evidence — especially when it comes to enrolling the uninsured in Medicaid, which is where half of them are headed. Several of those links are to junk studies; he ignores studies with contrary findings; and he conceals what I think is really interesting (given that we’re about to plop down a cool trillion) — health economists don’t actually agree on what difference health insurance makes.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
