Health reform: Now the fight gets real

Health reform just became real, said Kate Pickert in Time.com. Some of the most popular consumer protections in the massive reform package signed into law by President Obama in March kicked in last week, as the White House and congressional Republicans resumed the battle for public perception of the changes. Now in effect are provisions that prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions; end insurer limits on lifetime and annual benefits; and allow children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ policies. Virtually no one objects to these specific changes, but the fate of reform in its entirety is much in doubt. Republicans vow to dismantle or block funding of the health-reform law if they gain control of Congress, and a new poll reveals a still-skeptical public, with 40 percent opposed to reform, 30 percent in favor, and others still unclear about what the law would mean. When Democrats rammed this law through Congress, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, they were certain that “the public would eventually come around.” How wrong they were.

The public has every reason to distrust Obamacare, said Philip Klein in The American Spectator Online. As employers and consumers confront the thicket of new regulations, it’s become clear that the law “will increase costs, raise premiums, and cause Americans to lose their current coverage—even if they like it.” The damage has already begun, said Michael Tanner in the New York Post. “We’re seeing premiums jump as much as 9 percent nationally,” as insurers look to recoup the added costs mandated by the law. Keeping children on parents’ policies up to age 26 will add $3,380 a year in costs, the government admits. Who do you think will pay for that? Right: consumers, in higher premiums and reduced benefits. Half of the seniors enrolled in the successful Medicare Advantage program “will be forced out of those plans” as Obamacare rolls on. The reason is elemental: You can’t give 30 million people new benefits without someone paying for it. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

True enough, said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. All the shady practices banned by the new law, such as “discriminating for pre-existing conditions,” were used by insurers to save money. For political reasons, the Democrats deliberately front-loaded the popular changes, while delaying the cost-saving measures—tax increases, major Medicare cuts, and mandatory health-insurance coverage—until 2014 and later. When millions of currently uninsured people join the insurance rolls (many of them in their 20s and healthy), it will increase insurers’ revenues, and spread both costs and risks. That’s the balancing act on which the plan depends. In staging their “tantrum,” Republicans are telling voters they’ll keep the popular provisions, while eliminating the painful ones, said Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic. As any grown-up could tell you, that’s not possible.

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So what happens if Republicans do take control of the House? asked Martin Schram in The Providence Journal-Bulletin. “Nothing.” Sure, the GOP will “ensure that Obama’s reforms are duly disrespected and unevenly enforced,” forcing Obama to “explain and justify” an unpopular plan he once thought would be his legacy. But the GOP won’t have the numbers to override presidential vetoes and kill Obamacare. Instead, we’ll have a vicious stalemate “pushing both parties toward their right and left poles, in a prelude to a 2012 presidential campaign that will be one of the ugliest ever.”