Over at the AEI Ideas blog my colleague Yuval Levin and I make the case that both supporters and opponents of Obamacare should agree to delay the implementation of the major provisions of the law that are now scheduled for 2014.
Everyone should now understand that, if there is not a delay, next year will be the scene of an epic disaster for American health care. The trouble started, as it often does, at the top. The president insisted on passing a reform with only Democratic support. That guaranteed large-scale public opposition, which has persisted. It also left the nation’s Republican governors less than enthusiastic about becoming the law’s enablers.
The president compounded the problem by stalling on key implementation decisions in 2011 and 2012 to avoid controversy before the election. States could not get answers to basic questions about what the law’s “exchanges” would involve or what their options were for Medicaid. And insurers even now remain unclear about the regulatory environment they will confront. With so much uncertainty, states, employers, and insurers all delayed their decision-making as long as possible too. The result is that implementation of the largest social-welfare policy change in a generation is far behind schedule.
The rest of the post is online at the AEI Ideas blog here.