Here's the problem with things like the five-year anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law: it gives places like Politifact the excuse to run
pieces like this.
Predictions about the health care law were a dime a dozen back in 2010. Supporters contended that virtually everyone around the country would soon have access to affordable insurance. Opponents said the law would cost a fortune by adding to the national debt and killing jobs.
Actually, none of those things have happened. […]
Undoubtedly, the law has led to fewer uninsured Americans. The percentage of uninsured adults in the United States in 2010 was 16.4 percent; at the end of 2014, it had fallen to 12.9 percent, its lowest point since Gallup started tracking the insured population in 2008.
However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects there will still be roughly 31 million uninsured adults in the United States by 2025, demonstrating that any notion the law would create universal coverage was a pipedream.
The idea that it was going to provide universal coverage was gone from the moment that undocumented immigrants were excluded, well before the law was signed. It was pretty damned clear before it became law that there would be a large chunk of people left out. Then came the Supreme Court and Medicaid expansion. In 2010, no one knew that Chief Justice John Roberts would sacrifice the health care of about 5 million (it's now down to about 4 million) in order to feel politically okay about allowing the law to continue. Which Politifact actually does acknowledge ("But following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 intervention, states now have the option to expand Medicaid, a health insurance program intended for the very poor.") So why even set up the whole "supporters contended that virtually everyone around the country would soon have access to affordable insurance" narrative in the first place?
Because they're Politifact, that's why. Never mind that over five years, with many intervening forces, there's no way a major policy program will unfold the way people predict it will in the beginning. There's actually stuff in this article that provides some interesting historical context, but the idea behind it—he said, she said—is just bankrupt of meaning and of utility.
Of course, it's not like Politifact hasn't gone there before. This is a marginally better use of their time than fact-checking people's homemade signs. Marginally.