On Election Day, the health care and financial security of 20 million Americans will be at stake. That’s the number of people who have gained health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. And news that premiums for plans under the law are set to increase by an average of 22 percent, just before voters head to the polls, has thrown another curveball into an unpredictable election.
The increase will affect only about 3 percent of Americans who have private insurance, but that fact has done nothing to quell Republican outrage, aided by wall-to-wall news coverage. (“Obamacare” and “death spiral” appeared in headlines from the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal andForbes.) But this outrage is totally divorced from any context and obscures the real choice before us.
The above excerpt was originally published in The Washington Post.
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