Editorial Board
The Pointless Debate Over Obamacare
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President Barack Obama’s remarks this week on the Affordable Care Act had the trappings of importance: members of Congress in the audience, ordinary citizens on stage. All that was missing, as is too often the case in the health-care debate, was anything important to say.
The president made a show of saying that, thanks to the law, 8.5 million Americans will get 2012 premium rebates from their insurance companies, averaging $100 a family. That amounts to less than 5 percent of all Americans with health insurance, he neglected to note, and the checks aren’t a lot of money, given that the average annual worker contribution for employer-provided family coverage last year was $4,316.