Health Care Reform and Cost Control

Abstract

After nearly a century of failed attempts, comprehensive health care reform was enacted on March 23, 2010, when President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In attempting to modernize and improve a large part of the health care system, it may be one of the most ambitious and consequential pieces of legislation in U.S. history.Although the bill has now been signed into law, the debate over its design and intended effects has not abated. As concerns appropriately mount about the nation's medium- and long-term fiscal situation, critics of the ACA have resurrected doubts about its cost-containment measures . . .