Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the president of the American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. He also served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. With the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces beginning their third open enrollment this week, RealClearHealth talked to Holtz-Eakin about what’s working, what’s not working, what can be done today to address problems with the law, and what should be on the agenda of a new administration in 2017.
The financial failure of more than half the nonprofit health insurance companies created under the Affordable Care Act has handed Republicans a new weapon in their campaign against the health law, thrown the Obama administration on the defensive once again and left more than a half-million consumers in the cold.
Some observers might question the usefulness of ongoing policy discussion about health insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. After all, as of January 2014, insurers are barred from excluding such conditions from their policies, even for short periods, by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Moreover, insurers are no longer allowed to charge higher-than-average premiums to consumers with higher-than-average expected health costs. In short, many would say the ACA has solved the problem, so there’s nothing more that needs to be discussed.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin is the president of the American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. He also served on President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. With the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces beginning their third open enrollment this week, Real Clear Health talked to Holtz-Eakin about what’s working, what’s not working, what can be done today to address problems with the law, and what should be on the agenda of a new administration in 2017.
Yesterday’s post discussed what we know about Obamacare as its third open enrollment season commences. Here are four major questions about the future of Obamacare that remain unanswered.
More than half of the 23 taxpayer-funded Obamacare insurance startups are not offering plans next year, and another in Michigan said Tuesday that it was winding down. Michigan’s Consumers Mutual Insurance announced late Tuesday it would not offer plans in 2016, making it the 12th Obamacare consumer-operated and oriented plan to close up. The closure comes two days into Obamacare’s third open enrollment period, and on the same day a congressional panel lashed out at an administration official about the spate of shutdowns.
Higher deductibles are prompting some consumers to skip or postpone doctor visits because they are unable to afford the additional out-of-pocket costs. Too many consumers only factor in the amount of the monthly premium and discount the importance of other criteria such as the cost of the copayments, prescription drugs and deductible. As more companies are increasingly shifting a larger percentage of health insurance costs to their workers, consumers need to examine all options.
“Cheap” could cost you more for Obamacare next year. People who buy the cheapest health plans on the biggest Obamacare exchange without getting financial assistance are facing the largest increases for premiums and out-of-pocket costs in 2016, new analyses show.
In Tennessee, the state insurance commissioner approved a 36 percent rate increase for the largest health insurer in the state’s individual marketplace. In Iowa, the commissioner approved rate increases averaging 29 percent for the state’s dominant insurer. Health insurance consumers logging into HealthCare.gov on Sunday for the first day of the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment season may be in for sticker shock, unless they are willing to shop around. Federal officials acknowledged on Friday that many people would need to pick new plans to avoid substantial increases in premiums.
For the press, the debate over ObamaCare is over. There may be a few proverbial Japanese soldiers wandering on isolated islands yammering on about the failure of ObamaCare, but word will eventually filter down to them, too. This assumption is so deeply embedded that it is impervious to new evidence that ObamaCare is an unwieldy contraption that is sputtering badly. Yes, ObamaCare has covered more people and has especially benefited those with pre-existing conditions (to be credible, Republican replacement plans have to do these things, as well), but the program is so poorly designed that, surely, even a new Democratic president will want to revisit it to try to make it more workable.