EDITORIAL: No benefit in putting Obamacare down when it’s not terminally ill

There is no shortage of blame to go around in how cumbersome and disappointing the results are for the rollout of long overdue health-care reform.

But because none of us can get off this lighted rocket, the job of whiners in Congress and in Colorado’s own state Legislature is to correct course now.

In short, buck up and do your job.

We agree with critics who point out that health-insurance savings for many Colorado residents are dismal. We’re just as unhappy with how the roll out of exchange websites has been burdened with confusion and flawed delivery. We’re just as unhappy about why a country with so many resources, so many bright people and so much opportunity could launch such a dismal excuse for health-care reform.

But we’re not surprised, and you shouldn’t be either.

This newspaper and hundreds of other critics of the Congress that created the Affordable Care Act warned Americans then and all along the way that compromises made by Democrats in creating Obamacare would undermine its laudable goal: increasing Americans’ affordable access to health care. It was conservatives who insisted that the health-insurance industry be preserved in a new health-care system, turning aside single payer ideas that would have done away with billions of dollars in insurance company profits and payrolls, which feed from the U.S. health-care trough without providing health-care services. It is health-care consumers that support the health-insurance industry, and no one else. It was a conservative block that demanded that the current employee-based, health-care insurance system be preserved, even though it provably limits economic growth and penalizes smaller companies. It was a conservative block that refused to allow for a government-run, health-insurance company that would sell health insurance to anyone without profit overheads and push down the cost of health insurance. It was cowardly Democrats that allowed this health-care reform effort to be shaped by lobbyists and political opponents, rather than by the constituents they represented. It was this Congress that repeatedly refused to regulate health care profits, rates and costs, allowing hospitals, providers and insurance companies to gouge consumers during the past few years since Obamacare was signed into law. And clearly, the gouging will continue.

The mission was simple. Since health care has become wildly expensive and insurance-based in this country, requiring everyone to have insurance would drive the cost of premiums down. Getting poor Americans on insurance rolls and off the dole would bring down the price for the middle-segment of America that must pay for health care for the rich and the poor out of their pockets.

While there are many fundamental problems with the Affordable Care Act that conservative blocks imposed on the system, it’s not too late to make changes that will ease the country into this new health-care model. In fact, we all have no choice but to push through this quagmire. We’ve allowed Congress to set levels of service to be provided by health-insurance companies. There is no compelling reason to excuse Congress from setting limits on the cost of services and the price of premiums, just as the government does with other critical services such as power, telecommunications and water.

On a state level, Colorado is free to reduce bureaucracy and streamline administration of the law. It is appalling that after so much time and money was directed toward preparing for and implementing the Affordable Care Act, that this is the best we could do.

Fixing obvious problems with the Affordable Care Act — not repealing it — needs to be job one for Congress and the Colorado General Assembly and state and federal administrations. Now.