Clinton Won’t Be Able to Escape Obamacare’s Many Broken Promises

(Photo: AP)

As President Obama enters the final months of his presidency, don’t expect him to spend too much time talking up the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. He has little to celebrate. Conservatives rightly warned that Obamacare would result in higher premiums and fewer health care options for the majority of enrollees. These predictions have largely proven true.

But what’s more interesting is that progressives are also dissatisfied with the president’s signature legislative achievement, which was muscled through Congress with absolutely no Republican support. For proof of liberal angst, consider the scenes at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where throngs of angry Bernie Sanders supporters voiced their frustration with the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, for being too beholden to corporate interests. She isn’t nearly progressive enough for the Left. Heated demonstrations, both inside and outside the convention center, made it difficult to present a united front for a party trying to win its third consecutive presidential election.

For progressives, the answer is more government, not less (the question doesn’t really matter). This certainly applies to health care, where a socialist utopia consists of a single-payer option, meaning the government would crowd out the private sector.

The dissatisfaction for the Affordable Care Act is palpable even among rank and file Democrats who are enthusiastically backing Clinton. Polls consistently show support for the Affordable Care Act hovering below 50 percent, despite its boosters’ insistence that support for the law would rise once the wrinkles were ironed out.

This may help explain why Clinton did not mention the Affordable Care Act during her acceptance speech the convention. For a presidential candidate effectively running for a third Obama term, excluding Obamacare was not a coincidence. Instead, this omission was a perfectly calculated political decision to distance herself from a political albatross of failed progressive promises.

Among the most revealing mea culpa is a column by Bob Kocher published in the Wall Street Journal, headlined “How I Was Wrong About Obamacare.” Kocher is a physician who served as a special assistant to Obama when the White House was fighting for Affordable Care Act in Congress.

While not completely excluding himself from the Obamacare mess, Kocher concedes that the consolidation of the healthcare system has not resulted in greater savings and quality improvement as predicted.

Kocher comes up with a pithy example to make his point:

“Large health systems deliver ‘personalized’ care in the same way that GM can sell you a car with the desired options. Yet personal relationships of the kind often found in smaller practices are the key to the practice of medicine.”

Kocher is correct, of course, and much of what he is describing forms the basis of what Republicans in Congress have been arguing for years as a better approach to expand health care. In short, true health care coverage is patient-centered and personalized. When talking about something as personal as medical care, a large one-size-fits-all approach is grossly irresponsible.

House Republican recently unveiled a series of health care policy proposals that build on a market framework, while urging greater innovation in an industry that has been slow to change.

Obamacare’s many broken promises include being able to keep your doctor, lowering health care premiums and having greater choice in the marketplace. It’s a cautionary tale of big government’s limitations when trying to accomplish something as complex as providing health care to millions of people living in a country as large and diverse as ours.

This is the legacy of the Obama presidency and one that Hillary Clinton will need to defend if she hopes to win in November.

Israel Ortega is a Senior Writer for Opportunity Lives. You can follow him on Twitter @IzzyOrtega.