Eliminating the artificially low limits on FSA accounts would provide significant benefits to families with special-needs children, diabetics, and employees who – or whose families – need vision, hearing, dental or orthodontic care, or any other health care not normally covered by health insurance. It would also lessen the pain of higher health insurance deductibles and other patient cost-sharing, which could even reduce insurance premiums, and therefore federal premium subsidies. The result would be substantial help with health care expenses to families who need it most, with a minimal impact to the federal budget.
In addition, eliminating the FSA “use it or lose it” rules would provide benefits to those same families and many more, while at the same time eliminating wasteful health care spending and possibly reducing health insurance premiums, with almost no
Yesterday, in its budget and economic outlook for the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office substantially changed its short-term Affordable Care Act estimates in ways that show the law is performing far worse than expected. CBO’s new projection of 13 million exchange enrollees in 2016 is nearly 40% below previous expectations. CBO’s also projects that the average subsidy per enrollee in 2016 will increase by about 18% relative to its March 2015 ACA estimate—an indication that enrollees are both less healthy and poorer than the agency originally projected.
As the third open enrollment season for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act comes to a close on Sunday, a new poll reveals that many uninsured Americans still aren’t paying attention.
The poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, released Thursday, found that the majority of the uninsured say they don’t know the deadline for getting coverage this year. Virtually no one knew that the fine for going without health insurance in 2016 has jumped to $695 per adult or 2.5% of household income — whichever is higher.
The term “Cadillac tax” is evocative: It suggests that the health-insurance plans it would tax—through a provision in the Affordable Care Act—are to regular health insurance as a Cadillac is to a Kia. President Obama once described the levy as targeting “really fancy [health insurance] plans that end up driving up costs.”
But what many Americans may not realize is that “Cadillac tax” is in part a misnomer. While some plans that qualify for the tax may be high-end with extra benefits, or “really fancy,” not all of them are. Nor is every employee with an expensive plan a corporate executive. Over time, the number of Americans affected by the tax is expected to increase, as is the revenue the government expects to raise from their plans.