{"id":876,"date":"2013-04-29T13:06:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T18:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=876"},"modified":"2013-04-29T16:29:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T21:29:18","slug":"876","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/876\/","title":{"rendered":"Obamacare Making Lives Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Jonathan Cohn observes some recent fretting about “what happens next year, when [Obamacare] starts making insurance coverage available to nearly all Americans” (“train wreck,” “chaos,” “panicked” Democratic senators, …) and\u00a0regards it as a positive development<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, the conversation represents progress. Instead of talking about whether we should have a health care reform law, we\u2019re talking about how well (or not well) the law is going to work. So let me spoil the surprise for you: It\u2019s not going to work as well as many of us would like, and the initial adjustment may not be easy. The whole enterprise is going to be a work in progress. And that’ll be ok\u2014because it will still do a lot of good and make life better for most people, particularly with the passage of time.<\/p>\n

…<\/a><\/p>\n

The key, really, is expectations. On Friday, the\u00a0Commonweath Fund<\/a>\u00a0released a report with two key findings. One was that more young people have health insurance, thanks to Obamacare\u2019s requirement that insurers make coverage available to people under 26. That\u2019s a reminder of benefits the law has already delivered, without the ill-effects critics had predicted. The other finding is that large numbers of Americans remain uninsured or under-insured\u2014simply put, they can\u2019t get health care when they need it, or they remain exposed to financial catastrophe when they get sick. These people may be a lot better off because of Obamacare or they may be only a little bit better off. Either way, they\u2019ll be better off\u2014and, over time, their situation will improve. That\u2019s not bad for government work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n