Townhall Finance
Question of the Week: Will Obamacare Collapse?
By Daniel J. Mitchell
Jul 15, 2013 

We have a very interesting question from a reader in Nebraska. Is Obamacare such a cluster-you-know-what that the law will self-destruct? 

Well, I’ve already explained why I’m optimistic about the possibility of turning Obamacare lemons into free-market lemonade. 

Simply stated, the law took a healthcare system that already was a mess because of government intervention and subsidies and it doubled down on that misguided approach! 

And since it’s highly unlikely that more government is the solution to problems created by government in the first place, I think we’ll have great fun being able to highlight all the bad consequences of Obamacare and make a principled case for pro-market reform (meaning not only Medicaid reform and Medicare reform, but also tax reform to help deal with the third-party payer crisis). 

That being said, I don’t think Obamacare will collapse on its own. We’re going to have to give it a push. A big push. 

This is because legislation will be required to undo all the taxes and subsidies in the law. And even though we have the bizarre situation of the Obama Administration deciding to deliberately ignore a legal requirement to impose an employer mandate beginning in 2014, we’ll also need legislation to undo both the individual and the employer mandate. 

In other words, the fact that the law won’t achieve any of its goals (such as lower costs and universal insurance coverage) won’t cause the bad policy to disappear.

But it will make the law even more unpopular – particularly if we do our job. 

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