Hold the doom and gloom. Obamacare might not be so bad after all.
Although Republicans in Congress are determined to kill the president's Affordable Care Act (ACA), there's virtually no chance they'll succeed.
Yet hardline conservatives continue their efforts to convince Americans the president's health reforms will send insurance rates soaring and turn into a debacle.
At the moment it doesn't look that way.
In Maryland, the state insurance commissioner recently approved rates for individual health coverage under the ACA, starting next January.
The most basic, bare-bones policy is eminently affordable, as low as $93 a month for a 21-year-old non-smoker in the Baltimore metro area.
The new policy gives consumers more benefits, too. It covers preventive care and minimizes co-pays and deductibles.
As a bonus, individuals with incomes under $46,000 a year - and families earning under $94,000 a year - are eligible for tax credits that make policies even more affordable.
All this sounds wonderful, but we've got a long way to go before Obamacare in Maryland can be called a success.
First, we'll see how many of the nine health insurers that submitted proposals to Insurance Commissioner Therese Goldsmith accept her reduced rates. Two (both owned by Aetna) have dropped out so far.
Then there's the question of how many of Maryland's 740,000 uninsured citizens will jump at the opportunity to sign up for affordable health-care protection. A big pool of new sign-ups is needed to make the program work.
And finally, we won't know for a year or more if the proposed rates accurately reflect the cost of insuring all those additional consumers.
Insurance companies are making their best actuarial estimates as to what it will take to pay the health-care costs for all these newly insured individuals who may require extensive medical work-ups and treatment initially.
Will it be more expensive than they expected or less expensive? Will the second-year rates go up like a rocket or come down?
The answer could determine the viability of the ACA.
In Maryland, the big winners of the president's health insurance program could be this state's hospitals, especially those with a large proportion of uninsured patients, such as Sinai Hospital, Northwest Hospital, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center.
If the number of uninsured in the state shrinks dramatically it could translate into better financial results for these medical facilities, which are struggling to control rising costs with meager rate increases approved this summer by state regulators.
The key could be competition among insurance companies for all the potential new business. Competition - a word Republicans should be championing - might keep rates low enough to prove appealing to uninsured Marylanders.
The new health insurance program is off to an encouraging start. Let's not jump to any conclusions, though: This grand experiment is still in its formative, early stages.
Barry Rascovar of Reisterstown is a longtime political columnist and communications consultant. He can be reached at brascovar@hotmail.com.
