Zeke Emanuel is tired of paying for your expensive medicine. Dr. Emanuel, who served in a senior position at the Office of Management and Budget where he contributed to the recurring nightmare known as Obamacare, recently complained in the New York Times [“I Am Paying For Your Expensive Medicine”] that his insurance rates are high because the medicines you’re taking cost too much.
In late September, the handful of CEOs leading Affordable Care Act-funded consumer operated and oriented plans traveled to Denver in search of answers. The past year had been a difficult one. Their companies were struggling, awash in red ink and facing a mounting list of operational challenges. A few co-ops had already shut down, and regulators were circling several more. The fledgling health insurers needed more support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services if they were going to survive. Most importantly, they needed a lot more money.
The Senate is going to have to re-write portions of the House-passed reconciliation bill after the parliamentarian said the legislation violated Senate rules. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled Tuesday afternoon that sections repealing the ACA’s individual and employer mandates would not meet the Senate’s criteria for the expedited process, called reconciliation.
Until Carly Fiorina criticized Obamacare during Tuesday’s prime-time Republican debate, there hadn’t been much attention to health care in the GOP debates. During last week’s Democratic candidate forum in South Carolina, I didn’t detect a single question about health care or the Affordable Care Act. This is not a knock on hosts and moderators; debates and forums such as the Democratic meeting last week are not the best vehicles for drawing out presidential candidates on the intricacies of health policy. The result, however, is that the public is not learning much from these widely viewed events about what candidates would do regarding one of the country’s most divisive issues should he or she be elected president.
As gridlock persists in our nation’s capital and good legislation continues to die in the Senate, it is clear the next president will play a key role in determining the future of Obamacare. That means candidates’ positions on the issue will be among the most important when ballots are cast next year.
One of the 12 failed co-ops created under Obamacare is now under investigation by regulators after the co-op was found to have downplayed its poor financial condition in official filings, the Daily Caller reported. The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) found that the Health Republic of New York co-op’s “financial condition is substantially worse than the company previously reported in its filings.”
While the Affordable Care Act has achieved a second victory before the Supreme Court and produced significant coverage gains, it might also have produced a less positive outcome: in an NBER working paper, Penn LDI colleagues Mark Pauly, Adam Leive and Scott Harrington found that a large portion of non-poor (measured by income above 138% of the poverty level) who gained coverage now have a higher financial burden and lower welfare (well-being) than when they were uninsured. The authors call this extra burden a “price of responsibility” for complying with the individual mandate to purchase coverage.
With the health insurance markets open for next year’s enrollment, Eve Campeau says she’s planning to look carefully at the fine print. Last time she shopped, she switched to a plan with a lower monthly premium, but found herself paying far more out-of-pocket for medications and doctor visits. While she might be saving money on the premium, she is reluctant to go to seek medical care because of the up-front cost.
A total of $1.23 billion in federal taxpayer dollars has now been sunk in 12 of 23 co-ops created under Obamacare that have gone out of business, representing another Obamacare failure, lawmakers say. Co-ops in Arizona and Michigan went out of business last week, adding themselves to the 10 that have already failed in Utah, Kentucky, New York, Nevada, Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina, and a co-op that served both Iowa and Nebraska.
The majority of ObamaCare’s insurance co-ops—12 of 23—have now folded, and their $1.24 billion in federal loans has all but vaporized. More will fail, nearly a million Americans may lose coverage, and now the contagion from their failures is spreading.