You’ll have guessed from the tone of my Obamacare links and comments that I didn’t think it was a good idea from the start and it’s been a great example of how not to implement a major government initiative. That said, it’s a sure bet that Obamacare will have influence on other countries as they consider their own health programs. Colby Cosh is surprised that the scandal-addled Canadian media hasn’t been paying more attention to the Obamacare train wreck as the wheels fall off in all directions:
Obamacare isn’t going to make major systemic change in either direction look more appetizing to Canadians. That’s an important Canadian angle right there. Not long ago it looked as though national pharmacare was likely to become an election issue here, quarterbacked by the NDP and perhaps the Liberals, too. The concept has plenty of support among economists and other health policy experts—the same class of kindly boffins that, in the U.S., lined up almost unanimously behind the Affordable Care Act.
For better or worse, nationalizing prescription-drug insurance seems likely to be a much tougher sell here in the immediate future. Any large, complex health care experiment will be. The more wise heads support it, the easier it will be for supporters of the status quo to shout, “Unintended consequences! Ivory-tower tomfoolery!” Indeed, political strategists may already be saying it to themselves.
American commentators are already starting to wonder if Obamacare’s difficult start and increasingly troubled prospects may end up as a victory for small-government conservatism. The problems for the program do not end with the calamitous state of the federal insurance-exchange website, or even with the nasty surprises handed to the self-employed and freelancers in the “individual market” who were falsely promised: “If you like your plan you can keep your plan.” Some Obamacare buyers are finding themselves shut out from their preferred doctors and hospitals; employers are junking non-compliant health plans; and many in the middle class who liked the Obamacare concept are facing sticker shock.
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The redistributive aspects of Obamacare were undersold, and possible pitfalls obviously not foreseen. The neoliberal Democrat Walter Russell Mead put it neatly the other day: “President Obama may be the Democrat who ends up convincing millions of American millennials that Ronald Reagan was right, and that the progressive administrative state is neither honest nor competent enough to solve the problems of the American people.” If that is the case, the effects cannot be confined to the U.S.
