Obama’s Re-election Entrenches PPACA

Regular readers at HealthLeaders Media will note that we general avoid political stories and commentary related to healthcare.

There are several reasons why, not the least of which is the saturated political coverage elsewhere on the Internet. Most importantly, however, is that people who work in healthcare and those of us who cover it understand that economics, not politics, is the primary force behind the reforms we are fumbling through.

Regardless of who had won Tuesday's presidential election, or which party controls Congress and state governments, the growing cost of healthcare, at two or three times the rate of inflation, requires that our elected leaders in both parties at state and federal levels help the rest of us to keep healthcare affordable.

So, what does the re-election of President Obama mean for healthcare reform? For the most part, it means a continuation and entrenchment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare."

Love it or hate it, this landmark expansion of healthcare coverage has proven itself as sturdy as a supersized bariatric chair.

Since it was passed in March 2010, the PPACA has survived town hall shriek-a-thons, the rise of the Tea Party, emphatic and bitter Republican opposition in Congress, the 2010 mid-term elections that became a referendum on the PPACA, the attempts in Congress to repeal it that followed, an unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge last June, and vows over the summer and fall by just about every Republican presidential and Congressional candidate to repeal it if elected.