In his final State of the Union address, President Obama spent little time discussing health care programs. In sum, the president made one generic reference to Medicare, made no mention of Medicaid, and spent only about 30 seconds discussing his signature health care legislation—the Affordable Care Act—recapping its main purpose and making three claims about how it is performing.
The president claimed that the purpose of the ACA Is to ensure portability of coverage, that health care inflation has slowed, and that nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far. He also claimed that businesses have created jobs every single month since the ACA became law. He failed to mention the nation’s greatest fiscal challenge: the unsustainability of entitlement programs.
This piece by Brian Blase aims to fill in some of the gaps.
