Health Costs, Regardless of Your Politics

Dr. Emanuel is correct that no Americans, including liberals, can ignore escalating health care costs. Unfortunately, this is exactly what he and the rest of the Obama administration did in passing the Affordable Care Act.

To obtain the cooperation of important stakeholders — the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and major pharmaceutical companies — in achieving the laudable goal of expanding coverage, our dysfunctional, inefficient and exceedingly expensive system was left intact.

Now we must do the heavy lifting of actually fixing America’s health care system by carrying out structural improvements that will, by their very nature, reduce the incomes of many powerful health care constituencies. This reform effort is the struggle upon which history will judge President Obama’s health care initiatives, for, if we fail, America will not only be unable to afford the expanded coverage of the new health care law, but we will also be unable to continue Medicare or Medicaid as we know them.

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