Several GOP members of the U.S. Congress are said to be devising a strategy for repealing Obamacare. Pres. Obama today is on Capitol Hill to rally Democrats to resist this GOP effort to repeal. In the broadcast news reports that I’ve heard yesterday and this morning about this repeal effort (and about Obama’s struggle to counter it), pro-Obamacare pundits and politicians keep repeating that repeal would “disrupt” the insurance market, as well as “disrupt” the lives of those Americans who are insured under Obamacare.
Regardless of Obamacare’s merits or demerits, this argument about how repealing a seven-year-old piece of legislation will be “disruptive” is very weak. Legislation itself is disruptive – and the more significant and sweeping the legislation, the more disruptive it is. Obamacare was significant and sweeping and, hence, disruptive. It disrupted health-insurance markets circa 2010, and it disrupted many patient-doctor relationships.
Of course, it’s point was to disrupt those markets (if not those relationships) in the hope of making medical care more accessible to more Americans. (Whether or not it successfully did so, and at a cost worth paying, is a separate matter.)
I have little respect for those who, when seeking to maintain interventionist legislation, argue that repeal will be disruptive, but who, when seeking to implement such legislation, either ignore or dismiss concerns about the disruption that the legislation will unleash.