Morning Must-Read: Alice Rivlin: People Who Wanted Market-Driven Health Care Now Have it in the Affordable Care Act

…What have these ‘socialist Democrats’ done to us? But wait a minute: Isn’t that how markets are supposed to work? The United States never adopted a simple national health plan to cover everyone…. In general, Republicans argued that relying on market forces would give people what they wanted while also putting pressure on the health system to offer more effective care for less money…. In general, Democrats argued that government should set benefits and the prices it would pay, as in a ‘Medicare for all’ program…. They pointed out that markets didn’t work well in health care because consumers didn’t know enough to choose what was best for them…. The compromise was to combine markets with regulation, sometimes called ‘managed competition,’ now called ‘the Affordable Care Act.’… Should believers in market forces try to gut the Affordable Care Act? Heavens, no. They should seize this huge opportunity to prove their case by helping to make the law’s markets work effectively…