As America closes in on the six-month anniversary of the passage of Obamacare and prepares for the November elections, liberal health groups are revving up to defend the unpopular new health care law. But the platitudes offered to justify the massive overhaul of the health care sector haven’t held up—as Heritage’s new online feature, Obamacare in Pictures, shows in graphic detail.
Heritage’s Center for Health Policy Studies has compiled the best and most recent research on the impact Obamacare will have on various aspects of the health care system. These charts (available for individual download or as a package) illustrate the unintended consequences of the new law and expose the unproven claims the President and other proponents of a government overhaul of health care made during the debate, such as:
- If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.
- It will bend the cost curve of health care spending.
- Obamacare won’t add a dime to our soaring federal deficit.
- Not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for Obamacare.
- It will not lead to a government take over of health insurance.
The graphics available in Obamacare in Pictures show how, rather than achieving universal coverage, some 41 percent of Americans will be uninsured in 2019 under Obamacare. Additionally, more than 17 million Americans are expected to no longer have employer-sponsored coverage because of the new law. Then there’s the $529 billion in cuts to Medicare that will be used to pay for middle-income Americans to purchase subsidized health insurance. The list goes on.
The list of unintended consequences of Obamacare is long. Despite the exorbitant cost to Americans on several levels, the health care overhaul will fail to deliver on the promises for which it was sold. The best way forward is repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act so that Congress can start over and get health care reform right. Obamacare in Pictures makes this clearer than ever.