Obamacare is at the center of national controversy again after the Department of Justice ruled the Affordable Care Act to be unconstitutional earlier this week.
The move stems from recent changes made to the law by the Trump administration. Eliminating the individual mandate changed the law enough to negate its legitimacy in the eyes of US 5th Circuit Court Judge Reed O’Conner and the Department of Justice.
Without getting too deep into the technicalities of how or why this happened, here's a better question...
...Is Obamacare worth keeping?
President Trump says Obamacare is a disaster that only benefits the health insurance executives, but Democrats like Barack Obama argue the policy was designed to help poor people.
So who's right?
Short answer: not Obama.
Longer answer: if Obamacare benefits the poorest people in America, as Obama has claimed, why don't poor people want it?
Take Louisiana for example. While Louisiana has a lot to offer in terms of culture and history, the state ranks in at #49 for poverty among US states, according to the United States Census Bureau.
Now that it's been established that poor people live in Louisiana, how do those poor people feel about Obamacare?
Here's another short answer: they hate it.
The number of people enrolled in health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s individual exchange in the state of Louisiana plunged in 2019 to record lows. Enrollment in the Obamacare exchange in Louisiana fell by more than 15% over the past year. These are the lowest enrollment numbers in the state's history. If individuals and families can find an alternative, they simply don't like the ACA.
This happened for a number of reasons. The economy improved so more people got on their employer's insurance programs and expands in Medicaid made that option more appealing to others but, more than anything else, people don't like Obamacare because it sucks. The costs are too high, the premiums are absurd, the options are slim & the benefits stink. If you like your doctor, say goodbye to your doctor because he doesn't take your ACA plan.
And low enrollment numbers don't just look bad - they also hurt the program. If enough people don't sign up for ACA, the program might not have enough funding to work. This is something you rarely hear people say, and that's probably because most of the lawmakers who voted to pass this ridiculous law have never even taken the time to read it. How could they? It's thousands of pages long and politicians are too busy going to cocktail parties to read the policy they're passing.
So as the nation dips into another hot heated debate over the future of Obamacare and it's legitimacy, a debate that's sure to bleed into the next Presidential election, let's not forget what people living in real poverty think of this law: they don't want it. The Democrats sold Obamacare to us under the guise that it would benefit low income individuals, but low income individuals would rather have anything other than ACA connected plans, and sometimes that includes the option of nothing.
Obamacare: it sucks so much the lawmakers who invented it don't even want it. Let that sink in.