Despite the best-laid plans of our central planners, Obamacare is unraveling. In 2009, the Obama administration proposed an ambitious bill that aimed to seamlessly expand health insurance for millions of Americans. The uninsurable would be guaranteed access to insurance. The insured would keep the plans they liked. The uninsured would be penalized. Profitable insurers would transfer their gains to unprofitable competitors. Online exchanges — the mechanism to hold these mandates together — would allow customers to choose from a wide range of subsidized insurance policies. Or at least that was the plan.
We are only three years into this bold, persistent experiment, and virtually all of the experts’ forecasts have already been proven wrong. The carefully crafted measures designed to stabilize the markets have faltered. The uninsurable are using coverage that is far more expensive than anticipated. The insured lost the plans they liked and are now confronting skyrocketing premiums and dwindling choices. The uninsured are not signing up, leaving risk pools skewed toward older and sicker customers. Insurers are suffering far greater losses than expected and are rapidly fleeing the exchanges. As I discuss in my new book, Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power, these failings are the entirely foreseeable consequences of the law’s fractious birth, illegal implementation, and arrogant central planning. A careful study of Obamacare’s history leads to a bleak forecast of the law’s uncertain future.
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