The most credible rap against the Affordable Care Act is that it raises the cost of insurance bought in the individual market for people who have no preexisting conditions and earn too much to qualify for subsidies.
That is true. Hence all the "rate shock" stories bruited by the GOP last fall. Most of those stories did not survive scrutiny, because the GOP went for dramatic hardship cases, and most true hardship cases qualify for subsidized coverage. Those truly dinged by the law were more like a couple with two children profiled by the New York Times earning about $100,000 per year and a single 50-something man earning just under $50,000 profiled in the same article -- folks on the wrong side of the subsidy cliff.*
Somewhere between one and five million people suffered at least short-term financial harm of this sort. Their numbers are now dwarfed by the 6-7 million people getting subsidized private plan coverage, the 7 million-odd added to the Medicaid rolls, and the 2-3 million under age 26 who gained coverage on their parents' plans.
The law as a whole remains unpopular -- because Republicans have been relentlessly smearing it for five years, because the individual mandate has always been an unpopular concept, because healthcare.gov dysfunction imprinted "train wreck" perceptions before the problems were patched and signups surged, and because astounding numbers of the still-uninsured still don't know that they qualify for subsidized coverage.
Nevertheless, reality has seeped in enough to sap the strength of the Republican attack. And as the intensity of that attack has diminished, its policy core has shrunk to a simple line that masks a core evasion. Here's one iteration, as expressed to Talking Points Memo's Sahil Kapur:
That is true. Hence all the "rate shock" stories bruited by the GOP last fall. Most of those stories did not survive scrutiny, because the GOP went for dramatic hardship cases, and most true hardship cases qualify for subsidized coverage. Those truly dinged by the law were more like a couple with two children profiled by the New York Times earning about $100,000 per year and a single 50-something man earning just under $50,000 profiled in the same article -- folks on the wrong side of the subsidy cliff.*
Somewhere between one and five million people suffered at least short-term financial harm of this sort. Their numbers are now dwarfed by the 6-7 million people getting subsidized private plan coverage, the 7 million-odd added to the Medicaid rolls, and the 2-3 million under age 26 who gained coverage on their parents' plans.
The law as a whole remains unpopular -- because Republicans have been relentlessly smearing it for five years, because the individual mandate has always been an unpopular concept, because healthcare.gov dysfunction imprinted "train wreck" perceptions before the problems were patched and signups surged, and because astounding numbers of the still-uninsured still don't know that they qualify for subsidized coverage.
Nevertheless, reality has seeped in enough to sap the strength of the Republican attack. And as the intensity of that attack has diminished, its policy core has shrunk to a simple line that masks a core evasion. Here's one iteration, as expressed to Talking Points Memo's Sahil Kapur:
"Ensuring that people with preexisting conditions have access to coverage has long been a popular policy, and one where there is bipartisan agreement. It's the the entirety of ObamaCare that remains EXTREMELY unpopular," Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the Senate GOP's campaign arm, told TPM in an email.
