This isn't the first time a major health law has gotten off to a rocky start. In the beginning, things didn't look so good for the now very successful Medicare prescription drug law, either. "About this time in 2005, the percentage of people who had an unfavorable opinion of the law was actually higher than those who had a favorable opinion," says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. Corlette, who recently co-authored a paper on the lessons learned from the implementation of the Medicare drug law, says many of the same complaints being made about the Affordable Care Act today were also made about the Medicare drug program then. The Medicare invited private insurance plans to compete to offer prescription drug coverage to seniors and the disabled.
