Diagnosing America’s Health Care Mess: Part 1

With Republican repeal-and-replace efforts temporarily sidelined, now is a good time to step back and take a big picture view of exactly how we got into the mess we are now in regarding health care. What should be clear to people of all political persuasions is that Obamacare did not solve America’s health care woes.

If we take a long-term view (i.e., remembering that 90% of the nation’s population was uninsured back in 1940), the law has modestly reduced the number of uninsured. Most other promises made for the law were broken, most notably that a) if you like your plan, you can keep your plan (PolitiFact’s 2013 Lie of the Year); b) the law would...