Obamacare's Great Guarantee: If You Lose Your Health-Care Plan, You Can Get Another

Obamacare's real promise: if you lose your health-care plan, you can get a new one. "President Obama's critics are right: Obamacare doesn't guarantee that everyone who likes their health insurance can keep it. In some cases, Obamacare is the reason people will lose health insurance they liked. What Obamacare comes pretty close to guaranteeing, though, is that everyone who needs health insurance, or who wants health insurance, can get it. It guarantees that if you lose the plan you liked -- perhaps because you were fired from your job, or because you left your job to start a new business, or because your income made you ineligible for Medicaid -- you'll have a choice of new plans you can purchase, you'll know that no insurer can turn you away, and you'll be able to get financial help if you need it." Ezra Klein in The Washington Post.

DOUTHAT: Obamacare has a long way to go. "This was the week when liberals decided that it was safe to feel optimistic about Obamacare again...[L]iberals have apparently decided that just getting things moving in the right direction makes all the difference. Sure, problems persist, crucial errors remain, and confusion probably looms for some customers and insurers in January, when policies are supposed to take effect. But errors can be fixed, money sluiced around, more temporary changes made. The important thing is there will be no immediate political unraveling ... which means that enrollment will keep rising ... which means that by 2016, Obamacare will be a locked-in, impossible-to-repeal feature of the American landscape." Ross Douthat in The New York Times.