The Healthcare Mess Is Just Beginning
Louise Radnofsky writes in the WSJ:

The main goal of the 2010 law is to bring health-insurance coverage to Americans who lack it, yet two of the measure's key ways of doing this have hit obstacles.

More than half of the states are on track to sit out the law's Medicaid-expansion goal initially--which means millions of low-income Americans won't have access to health insurance through Medicaid as the law anticipated.

Meantime, 33 states have opted against running their own insurance exchanges, the websites where the law envisions consumers shopping for health policies and finding out whether they qualify for tax credits to help pay for them starting Oct. 1. While these residents will be able to use a federal exchange to buy policies, the federal government has had limited funding to set up the exchanges on behalf of the states and to provide consumer assistance for people trying to pick among insurance policies.

Moreover, state and federal officials have had limited opportunities to fully test the complex computer technology behind the exchanges before consumers start shopping.

Government + untested computer technology that is "complex." Right. I'm sure that will go swimmingly.

And the crazy thing is, I think this will probably drive health care through the roof for people who were already paying for it.

UPDATED: Of course, as we've discussed before, Obamacare isn't health insurance. Ari Armstrong writes at The Objective Standard:

Dr. Beth Haynes makes a surprising but warranted claim in her recent article for Huffington Post: "Very few Americans have health insurance . . . because what people call health insurance really isn't insurance at all."

Real insurance, Haynes explains, covers high-cost, catastrophic events, not routine care. What usually passes for health insurance today is actually "prepayment of medical expenses." Unfortunately, Haynes notes, ObamaCare makes this problem worse by mandating that "insurance" cover various types of routine care such as "health maintenance checks." Haynes points out the absurdity of this: "It's like having a law requiring homeowner's insurance to pay for lawn care, house painting and water heater replacement."

The consequence, Haynes notes, is that insurance companies have less money to cover truly catastrophic events; thus, "when we are at our most vulnerable, we are less protected." Because the federal government requires insurance companies to spend more on routine care, that money is not available for emergencies or catastrophes. The government's solution to the problem? To heck with the emergencies! Haynes offers the example of the American Academy of Pediatrics, "under pressure" to declare fewer premature infants eligible for treatment and to restrict the amount of care that insurance will cover for them.