We're coming up on the ninth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act's passage, and it's safe to say that Obamacare hasn't quite turned out as expected.
The program isn't much like what its architects wanted; the insurance covers fewer people, with less-generous benefits, and higher premiums, than originally envisioned. But it also isn't as dire as critics predicted. Though exchange enrollment seems to be declining, it's on a gentle downward slope rather than the catastrophic death spiral that opponents were hoping for. Obamacare may well have reached the kind of perfect mediocrity to which Washington provides eternal safe harbor: not really doing what it was supposed to, but too complicated to fix and not quite bad enough to repeal outright.