The
Economist is hardly a bastion of liberalism, or even of liberal economics. But the conservative magazine isn't crazy, and they have a message for the Supreme Court's conservatives on Obamacare:
don't be extremists.
This week the Supreme Court heard yet another legal challenge. In King v Burwell, the law’s opponents argue that its subsidies for individuals buying health insurance on the federally organised online exchanges are illegal. They are unlikely to prevail but, if they do, the law will be gutted and the insurance market thrown into turmoil.
That would be a terrible shame, for Obamacare appears to be working better than expected. First, despite the incompetent rollout of healthcare.gov (the website that allows people to use the federal exchanges), the proportion of Americans who lack cover has fallen from 16.2% to 12.3% since 2009. Second, the previously terrifying pace of medical inflation has slowed. The amount that America spends on health care grew by 3.9% a year in nominal terms between 2009 and 2011—having grown by 7.3% a year in 2000-08. […]
As Americans age and Obamacare continues to extend coverage, federal outlays on health will probably start to grow again as a share of GDP over the next decade. America still spends far more than it needs to on health care, as the gap with other nations shows. But there is hope at last that health inflation can be made more manageable. Scrapping Obamacare and starting again from scratch would make this harder. Far better to build on what appears to be working. For the Supreme Court to rule for the challengers would be a woeful outcome.
See, even the
Economist knows that Republicans aren't going to step up with a plan that can replace Obamacare.