Understanding Obamacare
Healthcare became a hot potato during this political season, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Governor Romney wants to repeal “Obamacare,” but what’s actually in the law and why was introduced in the first place? To address these common questions, I’m reposting one of my first articles on the topic.
This article describes a great presentation by Dr. James Rohack on Health System Reform. Rohack is a practicing cardiologist and Director of Scott & White Center for Healthcare Policy. He is also a professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center and was the president of the American Medical Association from 2009 to 2010 during debates over Obama’s Healthcare Law.
The presentation was held in Sun City, a planned community north of Austin for retirees with active lifestyles. It didn’t include handouts, but I was able to find some of Rohack’s slides online and offer them below with my notes.
A MUST SEE: The New York Times provides this timeline of nearly 100 years of legislative milestones and defeats.
Besides
our various articles tagged Regulatory, here’s
another good resource. Obamacare’s
Secret History is a detailed account of the sort of back room
political dealings that occur in this country and the corrupting role of
powerful special interest lobbying. It appears in the Wall Street Journal and
is obviously right-leaning, but it describes a political process that’s messy
under any administration as long as those special interests have so much access
and political influence. While the article implies that President Obama was
responsible for concessions made to the pharmaceutical industry, it also shows
that his original intent had to be compromised in order to get healthcare
reform passed at all.