Policy

ObamaCare's Worst Feature?

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John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, names his pick for the "absolute worst" thing about the health care overhaul:

Defenders of the new law invariably ignore the supply side of the market. They assume that if you insure the uninsured or give people more generous coverage that they will all get more health care without ever asking: who is going to provide that extra care?

If you assume that primary care resources are already fully utilized (and in urban areas the evidence for that is overwhelming) then one group can get more primary care only if some other group gets less.

The absolute worst feature of Obama Care (and it truly is inexplicable) is that close to 310 million Americans are going to get more primary care coverage than they had before. Not just welfare mothers, but Bill Gates, Bill Gates' father, Warren Buffett — everyone in the whole country is going to have access to a long list of preventive care services with no deductible or copayment. If they respond to their new incentives, they will all try to get more care than they were getting before. But since more care will not be forthcoming, the waiting times will grow at every emergency room and in every primary care doctor's office — just as they have in Massachusetts.

More on the Bay State's long wait times here