Health Care Still in Trouble

TRIGGER WARNING:  In which I argue that not everything the Government touches turns to gold.

For John, BLUF:  Well, you can keep your Doctor if you want to, or something like that.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why Didn’t ObamaCare Work?

The sub-headline:

More evidence that costly government insurance hasn’t made us healthier.

From The Wall Street Journal, by Mr James Freeman, 22 December 2017.

Here is the lede plus one:

Washington continues to debate health policy as if the number of people covered by government insurance programs is the key measurement of success. This week brought more evidence that the ObamaCare experiment of signing up millions more people for subsidized coverage has not made Americans healthier.

“Life expectancy in the United States fell for the second year in a row in 2016,” NBC News reports this week. The network quotes the government’s National Center for Health Statistics:

“This was the first time life expectancy in the U.S. has declined two years in a row since declines in 1962 and 1963,” the NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.

This column is not ascribing all of this historically bad news to the former president’s signature accomplishment. Researchers have cited various factors, including trends that began well before Mr. Obama took office. But it’s striking that the implementation of a massive expansion in federal health benefits has coincided with the reversal of a long-term trend of increasing U.S. life expectancy. At a minimum, it should inspire politicians to stop equating rising health appropriations with better health.

In the article the Opioid Crisis comes up and the PP&ACA comes up for its share of criticism.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff