Health insurer Aetna announced Thursday that it would completely withdraw from the Obamacare exchanges in 2018, after seeing its profits soar from reducing its participation this year.
The company said during an earnings call that it was withdrawing from the exchange in Nevada, the last state it had considered staying in. Aetna was leaving the possibility open because it was applying for a Medicaid managed care contract, and the state gives extra consideration to insurers that participate in both programs.
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Even if Republicans had succeeded in their recent effort to repeal the ACA, “skinny repeal” would have come nowhere close to solving the problems that plague our health-care system, especially rising costs and declining choices. Of course, the ACA also failed to solve those problems and in many ways exacerbated them. Republicans should not give up on reform that would lower costs, improve quality and ensure more widespread adoption of exciting health-care innovations. On the legislative front, there are several rifle-shot provisions that could be attached to must-pass pieces of legislation. Beyond legislation, the Trump administration can improve the ACA through the regulatory process. The Trump administration can also work with states that are interested in taking advantage of the innovation waivers in Section 1332 of the ACA, which allow states to fashion health reforms that suit their citizens best.
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The Senate GOP’s health failure is a political debacle that will compound for years, and the first predictable fallout is already here: Republicans in Congress are under pressure to bail out the Obama Care exchanges, even as Donald Trump threatens to let them collapse. The GOP needs to get at least some reform in return if it’s going to save Democrats and insurers from their own failed policies.
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With the Republican Senate failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act last week, the administration and Congress should consider paying greater attention to the healthcare problems of 2009.
When I graduated medical school in 2009, as the nation debated healthcare reform and the future of our healthcare system, the main challenges impeding doctors and patients were obvious to me. They included a rigid and perverse physician reimbursement system, a labyrinth of increasingly complicated, costly, and sometimes contradictory mandates and priorities, and a runaway malpractice system.
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When it comes to providing affordable health care to the people of Maine, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King are worse than out of touch—they are downright dangerous. After Maine expanded Medicaid to childless adults in 2002 under then-Gov. King, the program nearly bankrupted our state. But now Ms. Collins and Mr. King are pushing to do it again by refusing to reform ObamaCare and prevent the future expansion of Medicaid.
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The repeal and replace effort has failed for now. Republicans will move on to tax reform. It remains to be seen what they accomplish in an effort that is arguably at least as complicated as health reform. Ironically, Senator John McCain, the man whose thumbs down deep-sixed the frantic effort to find a way to get something resembling Obamacare repeal passed in the Senate, long ago offered one of the boldest proposals I have seen in my lifetime as it relates to both health reform and tax reform.
Senator McCain proposed to completely eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage (rather than merely capping it–a half measure designed to mitigate rather than eliminate the distortions caused by the exclusion while doing nearly nothing about its unfairness). As detailed in this Heritage report: His plan “would replace the special tax breaks for employer-based health insurance with a universal system of health care tax credits for the purchase of health insurance.
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