Affordable or Deplorable?

The Republican Party regained control of the U.S. Senate, but the Affordable Care Act—aka Obamacare—is here to stay. That’s because the GOP always dances to the tune played by big money. President Obama’s healthcare reform has turned out to be a great source of profit for the insurance companies.

Soon after the 2014 midterm elections The New York Times ran a story headlined “Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies.” Take that, Ted Cruz. The Republican senator from Texas has persistently threatened to end Obamacare because he thinks it’s bad for business. Clearly he needs to read the Times report, which cited Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute: “Insurers and the government have developed a symbiotic relationship, nurtured by tens of billions of dollars that flow from the federal Treasury to insurers each year.”

So much money is up for grabs that, as Times correspondent Robert Pear noted, “insurers may soon be on a collision course with the Republican majority in the new Congress. Insurers, often aligned with Republicans in the past, have built their business plans around the law [the Affordable Care Act] and will strenuously resist Republican efforts to dismantle it. Since Mr. Obama signed the law, share prices for four of the major insurance companies— Aetna, Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealth [Group]—have more than doubled.”