Every business site I regularly check has now slammed Obamacare as a POS. Being a contrarian I find this unananimity disturbing. Is there some hidden killer app in this hunk of junk bill that will aid the US?
Yes. This law made by committee to keep monopolistic insurance companies profitable while foregoing all successful models of universal health care in this and other economies appears to primarily by accident stumbled upon an incredibly robust design that virtually guarantees its survival and eventual success while generating an unexpected major stimulus to the economy.
The ACA will achieve all of this because of rather than in spite of its design failures. The first step in insuring all Americans was to eliminate medical underwriting, which has been done. Insurance companies cannot exclude people that might be unhealthy. This stops the death spiral of cherry picking policyholders. Everyone thinks that to accomplish this, the ACA had to guarantee the insurance companies a pool of desirable, healthy, young Americans who would be forced by the individual mandate to buy health insurance. Everybody is bitching and moaning that if enough of these 20 somethings choose to pay the $95 penalty the insurers will go broke. Fat chance. The ACA provides a government run and backed reinsurance fund sort of like deposit insurance. Your business sites didn't talk about that did they?
Since the premium credit is means tested, it functions as an automatic stabilizer just like unemployment insurance, except that it can never run out. Wow! We just invented stealth stimulus!
There are lots more goodies like this so that every piece of bad news generally will add to the success. If the ACA ends up destroying employer and union health insurance plans, then health costs will no longer be a cost component of American unit labor costs, benefitting American business. And all those individual plans Americans can't keep? If they met the coverage standards they would still be on the market. No more $5000 deductible plans that don't cover shit. Those folks are now forced into the exchanges where they will get better coverage with premium subsidies.