Green light for health care

The idea of reforming America’s inefficient and economically discriminatory health-care system seems to spark what legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin calls “health-care derangement syndrome.” Opponents of the Affordable Care Act warn with wild inaccuracy that the new law will bring socialized medicine and other imagined threats to liberty.

The new law is widely controversial, but also widely misunderstood. With the ACA upheld by the Supreme Court, Americans have yet another chance to learn about what the law actually contains. Here are the key provisions:

1) The ACA allows people whose incomes are up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level to enroll in Medicaid, the government health program for the poor. This step potentially extends coverage to 17 million working people who otherwise can’t afford insurance. (That number is uncertain, since the Supreme Court ruled that states can opt out of the expansion.) These people are our neighbors who have to choose between buying food and visiting the doctor. These are also the people who often end up going to an emergency room for care rather than to a doctor—a practice that is medically inefficient and financially expensive.