The rollout of “Obamacare” has been quite a bumpy ride. From a Supreme Court challenge to the current technical problems facing the exchange website,health care reform has not been easy. All the difficulties have led to some intense criticism from both sides of the aisle. While President Barack Obama’s pursuit of universal health coverage is noble, there are several fundamental flaws holding “Obamacare” back.
The first major problem is the poorly executed rollout of the federal health insurance exchange. The exchanges, one run by the federal government and several more run by state governments, were introduced in order to increase transparency in the health insurance market. Over the long term, this should drive costs down and increase the quality of coverage through competition.
Unfortunately, the opening of the federal exchange has been a disaster. Users are still having trouble accessing the marketplaces. A lack of proper testing pre-launch contributed to this problem, and ultimately Obama and those he appointed to head the creation of the exchange are responsible for the failure. The second big problem is the employer mandate, which requires businesses with more than 50 full-time employees to provide all employees with health insurance. To understand why this is such a horrible policy, imagine you are a business owner with 49 full-time employees and you don’t provide health insurance as a benefit. How likely would you be to hire a 50th person if the cost of the new employee was not only an additional salary, but also health insurance for all fifty employees?
Additionally, this policy encourages employers to fire full-time employees and hire multiple part-time employees. This is by far the worst part of “Obamacare” and should be removed from the bill entirely.
The third and final problem with “Obamacare” is one of honesty. When promoting the health care law, Obama promised voters they could all keep their health insurance. He knew then, and we all now know, this is not the case. Many of the plans being lost didn’t meet the bill’s basic level of coverage. Instead of misleading voters, Obama should have explained that some would lose their plans, but only to move on to plans with better coverage.
Overall, while “Obamacare” should be applauded for laying a decent foundation for future health care reform, it has too many faults to call it a truly great bill.