The Affordable Care Act: A User's Guide to Implementation

Sheila Burke and Elaine Kamarck seek to offer a balanced way of looking at the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that goes beyond today’s thorny political situation. They outline some meaningful metrics for establishing success or failure (or both) in the years to come. The authors first describe the complex federal-state architecture of the law and how, in many states, politics have dictated the choices made. And then they ask eight key questions that will determine the long-term versus the short-term success or failure of the health care law.