It looks like the Affordable Care Act may eventually be known as the
Unaffordable Care Act. As we get closer to the full implementation of Obamacare,
individuals and businesses are starting to count the costs. On this third anniversary
of Obamacare we are seeing the difference between the predictions made when the
legislation was being considered and the reality that is about to hit all of us.

Yuval Levin, writing in National Review, has noticed how various nuggets of
truth about health care reform are starting to surface in media reports. The New York
Times reported that: “the administration said it was unwise to tell consumers that they
could get health insurance that fits your budget. That message, it said, is seen as highly
motivational, but not as believable.”

Gone are the claims that health care reform will reduce the cost of health care.
Remember when we heard “if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you
like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan”? Most of those claims
are gone. Instead we are hearing that costs will go up 32 percent.

Yuval Levin believes that Obamacare faces two huge problems because of the
way the legislation was designed. First are the price controls on Medicare. Any across-
the-board rate cut to providers “would result in drastically reduced access to health care
for seniors.” Already we see that Medicaid’s low payment rates cause many doctors to
refuse Medicaid patients. That makes it difficult for many poor Americans to find health
care. If Medicare payments also drop, the same thing that has happened to the poor will
happen to seniors.

Second, the design of Obamacare will actually encourage many families to opt to
go uninsured until they need health care. The details are a bit complex to discuss here, the
impact is easy to see. In a few years, the out-of-pocket costs for a family will be larger
than the penalty they would have to pay for not having coverage.

These are just two reasons why health care reform may soon be called the
Unaffordable Care Act.