ACA Agonistes
News Flash: Health Care Still Unaffordable

The ACA may make everyday healthcare expenditures affordable for the previously uninsured, but many plans offered on the federal exchange still wouldn’t offer enough financial protection to families getting a bigger bill or more serious treatment. Studies since the law was passed in 2010 have confirmed that federal health care programs are really only good for one thing: not making people healthier or bending the cost curve, but making individuals more financially secure. If it turns out that despite the ACA, many families will still be one unexpected medical bill away from bankruptcy, the law will not even have solved the one problem it was capable of addressing.

ACA Agonistes
The Health Spending Slowdown (with a Side of Shrinkage)

For the fourth year in a row, the rate at which health care costs are growing has slowed down. But this time it’s extra-special because for the first time new data also finds that health care costs shrunk as a percentage of the economy in 2012. ACA supporters have jumped on these trends as the latest piece of evidence that the law is working well (e.g. this op-ed at the WSJ).

ACA Agonistes
Contraception Mandate Cases Suggest Wider Clash

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has issued a temporary injunction blocking the enforcement of the contraceptive mandate against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns dedicated to taking care of the elderly poor. If Sotomayor does decide to refer the case to the full Court, it will the third case about the mandate the Court will hear in 2014.The clash between growing federal power and the Court’s increasing tendency to decentralize decision making could be a big story in 2014, and the contraception mandate is a key place to watch it play out.

ACA Agonistes
Obamacare Hoisted by Its Own Petard

A New York federal judge has issued the first permanent injunction against Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. His opinion is the first to hold that the mandate, even with the compromise, is a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion. The opinion is important because the Supreme Court has agreed to hear two related cases, and the arguments offered by Cogan here could come into play at the Court. But it’s also an entertaining read, largely because Cogan repeatedly makes the point that the way the Obama administration has implemented the ACA undermines the very mandate it wants to defend.

ACA Agonistes
Even A Broken Law Is Right Twice A Day

The Affordable Care Act has seen two mildly hopeful signs lately. First, though every recent poll has found that the public is unhappy with Obama and the ACA, Obama’s losses don’t seem to be translating into GOP gains. The second piece of news is that a new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation hints that the worries about rates of enrollment by “young invincibles” may be overblown. If these are both accurate, the Obama administration could be in for the best run of positive coverage its gotten about the ACA in a while.

ACA Agonistes
Obamacare Up, Obamacare Down

Where does public opinion stand on the Affordable Care Act now that the front-end of the website is functioning better? It depends on which poll you use. Five new polls have come out in the past few days, and they paint different pictures of how the law is being received. But one lesson can safely be drawn from them taken as a whole: Americans are skeptical of parts of Obamacare but determined not to return to the pre-ACA situation.

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