EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Advocates of the new reform law have made several related claims:

• Once people know what is in it, it will be more popular,
• It is front-loaded with good news, and
• It will control costs and reduce the budget deficits in the future.

The experience of the first six months says something very different.  The implementation has been plagued with delays and a lack of transparency that make it very difficult for people, large companies, and small businesses to understand the new law.  And it is not, as a result, more popular.  Instead, polling done at the American Action Forum suggests that it has become a litmus test for whether America is on the wrong track.  Our polls indicate that roughly 65 percent of respondents think that the country is on the wrong track.  Of those respondents, just under 95 percent oppose the PPACA.

It has not been front-loaded with good news.  Instead, the country has been hit with the sticker shock of the impact on private-employer retiree drug plans; a tanning tax; payment reductions to inpatient acute care hospitals, long-term care hospitals; restructuring Medicare Advantage plans; the paperwork burden of the 1099 requirements; and higher insurance premiums.

Finally, it has become clear that it makes health care spending rise, not fall.  For this reason it flunks the most basic test of comprehensive health care reform and exacerbates a frightening fiscal future for the federal government. 

Read the full testimony here.