Why and how to fix Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is a broken system. From a pro-life perspective, it needs to be fixed quickly to prevent a dramatic expansion of taxpayer funded abortion.

Obamacare’s goals included expanding health insurance to the uninsured, resulting in longer life expectancy and lower healthcare costs, especially for those with preexisting conditions. 

Specifically, the bill’s authors pledged that Obamacare would “bend the cost curve” and save each family $2500 a year.

Did it work?

For the first time in one-hundred years, life expectancy actually declined for three consecutive years after its passage. And health insurance premiums doubled from 2013 to 2017.

Today, the plan is propped up by costly taxpayer subsidies that were expanded during the Covid pandemic. The One Big Beautiful Bill retired those subsidies, but Democrats want to restore them to mask the staggering, inefficient costs of the program. They plan on making this demand the centerpiece of the next election cycle.

Obamacare’s abortion intent

The furious debate over Obamacare focused on Democrat’s desire to weave abortion into ACA coverage. Republicans and a dwindling cadre of pro-life Democrats managed to (mostly) keep abortion out of Obamacare. The battle effectively ended the careers of pro-life Democrats. Not one remains in Congress. 

But the ACA required health insurance plans to cover artificial contraception, even for religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have spent years in court battling the law to protect their First Amendment rights.

So the ACA didn’t reduce costs. And it didn’t increase life expectancy. And yet Obamacare remains popular today. Close to two-thirds of Americans view it favorably.

Why Obamacare needs to be fixed fast

The endgame for Democrats is a single payer system that mandates taxpayer funded abortion.

Then Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, was asked on PBS’ Nevada Week In Review in 2013 whether Obamacare was, in actuality, a stepping stone to a single-payer system, giving the federal government total control over our healthcare system. His response was unequivocal: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Today, his party’s plan is “Medicare For All” which among many unsavory provisions, would override the Dobbs decision and mandate taxpayer funded abortion. 

If Republicans want to avoid the catastrophic implications of a single-payer Medicare For All system, they need to get ahead of the issue.

How to fix Obamacare

Since the public likes Obamacare, Republicans should embrace it and improve it. Voters like to know what you’re for more than what you’re against. 

Republicans should address one of the noble intents of the ACA, which was to provide affordable insurance to uninsurable Americans. But the current clunky system drives up the cost for everyone else. The system would work better if these modifications were made:

• Use ACA funds to subsidize only those with pre-existing conditions that make them uninsurable in a free market, removing them from the regular insurance pool.
• Removing them from the regular insurance pool would drive down rates for younger, healthier individuals who remain.
• Allow people to buy the insurance they need, whether if it’s ‘comprehensive’ or not. The point of insurance is to insure against financial ruin in the case of a medical setback.
• The savings they enjoy from lower premiums can be invested in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to cover out-of-pocket expenses.
• Then, remove restrictions on HSAs to allow them to be used to pay for insurance premiums if you’re self-employed.

These improvements build on the legacy of Obamacare while reducing counter-productive overregulation and anti-market restrictions. They offer a pathway to affordable health insurance premiums without being coercive.

The current political buzzword, ‘affordability,’ could become a reality with a rebooted Obamacare. For that reason, legislators in opposing parties will have reason to begin talking again in a bi-partisan fashion.

Pulse touches on this subject because of the very real concerns that progressive politicians will do everything in their power to impose a single-payer system on America that codifies abortion as ‘healthcare.’

We are always one election away from such a possibility if pro-life politicians don’t unify around a better plan. 

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