By James W. Russell
Huffington Post, March 20, 2015
If you thought that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, completely solved the health insurance problem of the United States, then you will probably be happy with some of the types of reforms that are being crafted to address the retirement crisis.
But if you find disturbing the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that in 2019, when the ACA is fully implemented, 22 million Americans will still be without health insurance and that there will be a deep inequality of plans for those who have it, you might be wary of what likely retirement reform will look like if it follows a parallel course.
Retirement, like healthcare, is an exceptionally profitable industry in the United States.
The sine qua non of corporate-supported retirement reform, like that of health care reform, is that it must not reduce the profits of the existing system. To get real backing from those who pay the lobbyists, it must increase those profits. The ACA thus gave health insurers more business through the subsidized exchanges.