Obamacare Is Smaller Than Anyone Expected

My recent column on the sixth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, generated some energetic criticism -- or, rather, half a paragraph of it did. While I acknowledged that many Americans have benefited from the law, I also said that the Obama administration was too eager to give it credit for slowing the growth of health-care spending. This slowdown, I pointed out, had begun in 2002, years before Obamacare was enacted. (I could have added that the decline was not confined to the U.S.)

Jonathan Chait, a journalist who strongly supports Obamacare, says that my skepticism about the law’s effect on health spending amounts to a refusal to face reality, or even to an attempt to craft a message that will appeal to “crazy” Republican voters.