Obamacare remains worthy: Our view

The last couple of months have been rough for the Affordable Care Act, what with the rollout of a shockingly unready website and President Obama awkwardly scrambling to make good on his ill-advised promise that all people could keep their health plans if they liked them.

Unsurprisingly, this slow-motion disaster has soured Americans on Obama and his signature law. A new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll shows disapproval for Obamacare at its highest point since Pew began polling on the law in 2010; 45% say it will have a mostly negative effect on the country, and just 39% say it will be mostly positive.

The news could get worse before it gets better. Many people who buy their own insurance are just finding out that their new plans might charge higher premiums and might not cover familiar doctors, hospitals or prescription drugs. No wonder Obamacare opponents think they have the law on the ropes.

And yet, the latest enrollment numbers are a reminder that the health care law has the potential to help millions of people and is worth salvaging. As the HealthCare.gov website and state exchanges began to function better, more than four times as many people signed up in November as in October, the administration said Wednesday. Nearly 1.2 million people are getting insurance, either through private policies or Medicaid.

Until now, the law's benefits have been mostly theoretical. But as more and more people select plans, the reasons Obamacare is necessary are becoming real:

While people whose insurance is changing are inconvenienced, those who could never get insurance because of pre-existing conditions or the inability to pay are getting it, thanks to subsidies and an end to insurers' ability to turn people away.

The insurance people are getting is substantial, not the flimsy policies that, for example, offered discounts on doctor visits but wouldn't cover a single minute in a hospital.

Annual and lifetime insurance limits that bankrupted people with major illnesses or parents of chronically ill children are gone.

Also gone is the ability of insurers to take away coverage when people really need it, on the pretext that they hadn't disclosed some minor condition from years earlier.

So yes, implementation of the law has been inept. But as problems are fixed, the law should still deliver on one of its two main goals: to make a substantial dent in the nearly 50 million people in America without health insurance.

The other goal of the Affordable Care Act — making health care more, well, affordable — remains a work in progress. Health spending has been growing unusually slowly, but it's unclear whether Obamacare is the reason. The sluggish economy is a likelier suspect.

Regardless, for all the frustration caused by the law's sloppy rollout, its critics have yet to offer a serious alternative that would provide coverage to more than a tiny fraction of the uninsured.

No doubt the path ahead will continue to be rocky. That's the nature of massive change. But at least it leads to better outcomes than the old system offered. And it certainly beats detouring onto a road to nowhere.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.



