Imperfect ACA an improvement

Sue Lani Madsen’s Oct. 31 column about the Affordable Care Act was an annoying whine. Like many anti-Obama complainers, she criticizes the ACA with nitpicky anecdotes, ignoring big picture evidence that says we’re better off with the ACA.

Overall, we have slower rises in health insurance premiums, a national decline in the rate of health care cost inflation, 17 million people with insurance who didn’t have it before, and more.

Apart from ignoring the big picture, Madsen offers no alternative to this “unsettled” policy. Come on. If you don’t like the policy, tell us what should replace it. Simply repealing the ACA sends us back to a past when health care costs were trending toward consuming a 20 percent share of our economy; a crippling outcome that would make us all debtor slaves of the nation’s health care bill.

If you really want better health care policy than the ACA, go to a single-payer plan — put everyone on Medicare. That’s what the rest of the developed world does. They don’t have a health care system co-opted by insurance middlemen who turn health care into a brokered commodity instead of a public service. The ACA isn’t perfect, but repealing it would be a horrible step backward.

Steve McNutt

Spokane