The ACA's a Policy Triumph, But a Political Failure

For all its recent difficulties, of which there are more below, Obamacare has made American health care both dramatically more affordable and humanitarian. Its various cost reforms have helped bring medical inflation to decades-low levels, and it has given access to basic medical care to 20 million Americans who lacked it before. And yet public opinion has never reflected these realities. The law’s advocates assumed that perception would eventually catch up with reality, but this has not happened, and there is little reason to believe it will anytime soon. And if there is a single overarching flaw in Obamacare, it is a failure to account for politics.