Critical Condition regular James Capretta, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is editing a new newsletter and website called ObamaCareWatch.org. Here, he chats with us about his new site, the state of Obamacare today, and what can still be done about it:

LOPEZ: What is ObamaCareWatch.org?

CAPRETTA: ObamaCareWatch.org is a new website focused on aggregating the key information about the new health-care law — including in-depth research and analysis, key news stories, incisive commentary, and facts about implementation. More broadly, the mission of ObamaCareWatch.org is to educate and promote sensible health-care policy that is patient-centered and market-driven.

It’s one-stop shopping for anyone who wants a regularly updated, searchable database on the current and anticipated effects of the new health-care law, the facts and arguments about it, and new developments concerning it. Visitors to the site have easy access to source documents about the law (primers, legislative language, CBO scores, etc.) and regulatory implementation information. The aim is to pull and organize the best of the best, without regard to which institution or think tank originally published the material. In short, we want to provide concerned citizens with all the facts they need to educate themselves and hold those who sponsored and passed the new health-care law accountable.

LOPEZ: What is e21 or Economics21?

CAPRETTA: e21, or Economic Policies for the 21st Century, is the sponsoring organization for the ObamaCareWatch project. It’s a new non-profit think tank dedicated to promoting free enterprise, fiscal discipline, economic growth, and the rule of law. The focus is on economic policy, broadly defined. Their research interests cover everything from macro issues and the financial markets to policy areas like taxes, health care, energy, the federal budget, trade, entitlements, housing, and transportation.

LOPEZ:: The Democratic party won. They got their health-care legislation passed into law. Why are they spending $125 million to convince people it was a good idea?

CAPRETTA: Because the president and his team understand that the battle is not over. Despite all of the talk about “early benefits,” the new law’s main provisions won’t get implemented until 2014. That’s a long time from now. In fact, there will be two national election cycles before Obamacare really gets up and running, and those elections could very well send U.S. health-care policy in a very different direction. Put simply, providing an educational resource about this law is very important.

LOPEZ:  If the elections were held this past March 22, voters would have been angry at Democrats about health care. Is there a danger that, come November, people will have moved on?

CAPRETTA: That’s possible, but in my view not likely. Our education effort at ObamaCareWatch.org is aimed at presenting information about the law in a consumer-friendly way so that concerned citizens can stay engaged. The passage of the health law was a pretty monumental event; I seriously doubt that the public, or voters, will have forgotten how they feel about it between March and November.

LOPEZ: You’ve recently focused a bit on the high-risk-pool program. Is it becoming clearer that that doesn’t work in the recently passed law?

CAPRETTA: The irony is that the president said one of the main reasons to pass the bill was to take care of people with preexisting conditions. And yet the first provision that is supposed to do just that — the new high-risk pool program — is, by all accounts, terribly underfunded and inadequate. According to CBO and the chief actuary at HHS, it will only cover about 200,000 to 300,000 people, or about 10 percent of the population that would qualify and needs assistance.

LOPEZ: Could that or any other one aspect of the law unravel the whole thing?

CAPRETTA: There are several aspects of the new law that could be its undoing. The president said it wouldn’t disrupt job- or employer-based coverage, but a closer look at the bill shows that it will provide strong incentives for employers to dump coverage onto the government’s lap. One recent study by Doug Holtz-Eakin predicted that employers would move about 35 million people from private, job-based insurance into the government-managed system. Concerned citizens will see and understand very quickly that the new law threatens what they have today, and many of them won’t want to go into the government system.

There are also deep cuts in the Medicare Advantage program — about $120 billion over ten years, according to CBO. Those cuts are going to hit low-income seniors very hard, starting this fall. Eventually, these benefit cuts will cost these Medicare beneficiaries about $800 per year. It seems unlikely that MA’s current enrollees will take these and other cuts to Medicare lying down. And if the Medicare changes get repealed, it would raise serious questions about the long-term financing of the entire bill.

LOPEZ: Is ObamaCareWatch.org anything like healthcare.gov?

CAPRETTA: No. ObamaCareWatch.org is focused on policy, and specifically the implications of the policy choices made in Obamacare. Healthcare.gov is more of a retail operation, trying to steer individual consumers toward the supposed benefits of the new law for them. The other difference is that we believe the third-party research we highlight is accurate and sheds light on the real implications of the legislation, while the administration uses its own facts and figures.

LOPEZ: At this point, what can be done? What’s law is law, right?

CAPRETTA: The only way to change direction will be another change in the law. We are hoping that our effort can contribute in a small way to an informed debate and better public-policy decision about health care in the future.

LOPEZ: Economically, who is going to be hurt the most by Obamacare?

CAPRETTA: The American middle class and those seeking jobs. Obamacare is mainly an exercise in wealth redistribution. It extracts resources from those with good health insurance today, through Medicare cuts and taxes, and uses those resources to pay for a massive entitlement expansion for others. But the taxes will mainly get passed on to consumers of health services, and that isn’t just rich people. In addition, the Medicare cuts, especially to Medicare Advantage, will hit middle-income and low-income seniors very hard.

Further, the bill imposes new costs on hiring. It makes it more expensive for small firms, such as restaurants, to hire new workers. That means those who are seeking jobs will have an even harder time finding them in the future.

LOPEZ: Other than yourself, who is doing work on Obamacare you’d especially commend to people?

CAPRETTA: Thankfully, there are a number of very hard working people who have been devoting themselves to promoting sensible health-care policy for a very long time now, many of whom will be familiar to NRO readers. Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute has been a real leader of the market-based-reform movement. The researchers at Heritage, including Bob Moffitt and Nina Owcharenko, continue to put out an incredible volume of valuable material. At AEI, Joe Antos, Scott Gottlieb, and Tom Miller are some of the most experienced and knowledgeable health-policy experts around. In the blogosphere, Keith Hennessey’s analyses are the gold standard, in my view. There are many others, but that’s a few of the people I collaborate with most frequently.