Predictions about the health care law were a dime a dozen back in 2010. Supporters contended that virtually everyone around the country would soon have access to affordable insurance. Opponents said the law would cost a fortune by adding to the national debt and killing jobs. <\/p>\n
Actually, none of those things have happened. <\/p>\n
As the Affordable Care Act makes its way to its fifth anniversary on Monday, the law has taken twists and turns, moving off course from where everyone thought it would be. <\/p>\n
Once expected to insure 32 million new Americans by the end of the decade, the projected target has been downgraded to 27 million far from the universal coverage many proponents hoped for. <\/p>\n
Unforeseen developments, like significant changes in health cost trends and a sweeping Supreme Court decision on Medicaid expansion, have meant the insurance provisions in the law will cost $139 billion less over the next five years than it was supposed to back in 2010. That has quieted some critics who expected massive, deficit-inflating costs. <\/p>\n
In five years, the law has steadily navigated toward its overall goal of decreasing the number of uninsured Americans, without dramatically disrupting the overall health care industry, for better or worse. Yet. <\/p>\n
\"The whole thing has been in much slower motion than what was predicted,\" said Michael Tanner, health care analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute. \"Whether you thought something good was going to happen or something bad, you sort of thought it would have happened by now. Instead, it's just been creeping along.\" <\/p>\n
Job killing? <\/p>\n
One of the warnings that the law's opponents issued repeatedly in the months leading up to passage was that the health care law would kill jobs. In 2011, Republicans titled the repeal legislation they were pursuing the \"Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.\" But independent studies didn't back up the claims that the law would end up reducing employment, so PolitiFact has rated such statements False. <\/p>\n
Last year, the GOP seized on a talking point that 2.3 million jobs would go away because of the health care law. But that, too, was a misreading of evidence. A nonpartisan report actually showed that some people would stop working if they no longer had to work for insurance. PolitiFact rated the claim Mostly False. <\/p>\n
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See the article here: <\/p>\n
PolitiFact: The federal health care law, things that came true and things that didn't (w\/video)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Predictions about the health care law were a dime a dozen back in 2010. Supporters contended that virtually everyone around the country would soon have access to affordable insurance. Opponents said the law would cost a fortune by adding to the national debt and killing jobs. Continue reading