Jim Geraghty: Healthcare Debate
If you want health-care reform to cost the U.S. government less than the status quo, that requires less money to go out the door to pay for other people’s health care and/or health insurance. This means someone else has to pay more, or someone else has to pay for their care or insurance entirely by themselves.
This is the core conflict of all health-care debates.
.. Everybody screaming “Medicaid for all!” basically means, “I don’t want to pay anything for my health care.” They think of themselves as being generous.
.. “found no evidence that Medicaid caused new enrollees to substitute office visits for [emergency room] visits; if anything, Medicaid made them more likely to use both.”
.. In 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was passed, CBO estimated that 21 million people would enroll in the ACA exchanges in 2016. The actual number was closer to 10 million. Even now, CBO believes that 18 to 19 million people will soon be enrolled in the exchanges, when in fact enrollment is degrading under current law, and will likely end up stabilizing at about 10 to 11 million.