The Washington Post: Coming Soon: A Bigger, Costlier Obamacare
<b>Printed in the Washington Post, June 16th, 2011</b>
Obamacare poses two great dangers to our nation: lower quality of care and runaway costs. It will stifle innovation and lead to rationing. But the overwhelming cost and the damage it will do to our nation’s finances at a pivotal moment in our history deserve greater scrutiny.
The promises Obamacare supporters have made about the ultimate cost of the program are based on highly unlikely premises. Those who support the 2010 health-care law are betting that costs will remain under control largely because its central feature — health insurance exchanges, which amount to a centralized, government-run market of subsidized insurance policies — will not be all that popular. They are counting on the notion that when the government offers “free” money, there will be few takers. This is not realistic.