Con: Why Timothy Stoltzfus Jost Thinks The Affordable Care Act Works

“They don’t like President Obama, and they don’t like this statute, and they’ve scored a lot of political points by creating the impression that this statue is unconstitutional.”

Jost: It cost money, and for people who would rather spend their money on something else, it means that they’re gonna have to spend their money on something that they would rather not spend their money on. Also, one could argue that it would be better to simply do what a lot of other countries do, which is to have a public heath insurance system, where you simply have Medicare for everyone, rather than require people to pay for private health insurance, where some of your money is going to go into profit and administrative costs of private health insurance. But if we’re going to get people insured in the private market, this seems to be the most effective way to do it.
 

Loop21: As we get deep into election season, what should readers advocate for when it comes to healthcare legislation? Why?

Jost: I think that the most important thing is that people understand what the issues are. I just despair of all of the misinformation and deliberate lies that are out there. I just saw another thing that’s been circulating around in the right-wing underground, that under “Obamacare,” you would have a chip implanted in you. And that’s the kind of nonsense that’s out there. I think the most important thing is for people to be informed as to the problems we have with healthcare in tour country — we have the most expensive healthcare system the world, we have 50 million people who are uninsured, although we have some very high quality healthcare in our country. I’ve seen repeatedly polls that show we’re 19^th among 19 developed countries in terms of preventable death. Thousands of Americans die every year from medical conditions that can be treated. And other counties are doing better than we are. We don’t have the best healthcare system in the world. We don’t have the worst, but we’re about average, and it’s very expensive, and many people aren’t covered. So the question is, how do you fix that? I think the Affordable Care Act is a good faith effort to do that. It’s not the statue I would have written, but I think it’s important for people to understand how it works, and why it is the way it is, and that we’ve got a serious problem here. Simply repealing it is going to make things worse rather than better. I would hope eventually that people have the right to choose a public option, as well as private insurance, and then we can have competition between the public plan and private insurers and see who actually does a better job.

Loop21: Is there anything else our readers need to know about The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?

Jost: I just think it’s important for people to find out what’s in the statute and not to just go on what they hear in the news, and not believe what they hear on campaign commercials. One good source is the Kaiser Family Foundation. It’s a nonpartisan public information source and it has lots of summaries of the legislation. The Consumer’s Union, too. I think it’s import that people turn to sources like that, rather than believe the lies that are out there.