George C. Halvorson (The Health Care Blog 2/15/23)

When the Affordable Care Act was passed, the politics were so intense and the debates were so filled with rhetoric in all directions that most people actually didn’t understand that there were three major component parts to the strategy and program that function very directly as a package, and should be looked at now in the context of several years of implementation to see how each part of that law is currently doing.

Medicaid was our first priority.

Our second major agenda for the Affordable Care Act was expanded insurance coverage for working adults. 

The third major leg of the Affordable Care Act was to become a much better purchaser of Medicare benefits