Reconciliation shows repeal is possible. Now is the time to show that replacing ObamaCare is possible too. To do that, Congress should spend the next year building a framework for a patient-centered, market-based alternative that empowers individuals to control the dollars and decisions regarding their health care. Congress must use sound financing, stabilize and liberate the health care market, and make financing simpler, transparent and direct to individuals.
In a survey of non-seniors, a New York Times/Kaiser poll found about one-in-five people struggle with medical bills even though they have insurance. Among insured people who reported crushing medical debts, about three-quarters reported putting off vacations, major purchases and cutting back on household spending.
Nearly two-thirds used up all or most of their savings. Far fewer had to resort to second jobs, take on more hours or ask family members for funds (42% to 37%).
The Obama administration is promising to crack down on healthcare customers who buy coverage in between enrollment periods to lower costs. Andy Slavitt, acting head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, acknowledged publicly for the first time Monday night that some customers are using loopholes in the enrollment sign-up periods to avoid paying healthcare premiums year-round.
He said more details about the administration’s plans will come next week, after the Jan. 31 deadline for coverage.
iMost of the people who tell you that consumerism can’t work in health care tend to work in health care themselves. But if they were doing such a great job, maybe our health care system wouldn’t be riddled with high costs, fatal medical errors, and hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud.
Companies in other industries – from Wal-Mart to Trip Advisor, Amazon, and Google – have figured out ways to simplify incredibly complex systems to lower the amount of time and the cost for consumers to identify affordable, quality products. Those companies have just one thing in common: they answer to consumers.
Rather than focusing on how health care worked in the past, policymakers should encourage competition by clearing away outdated regulations that prevent savvy, tech-based entrepreneurs from empowering patients with the information they need to find the providers who deliver the best outcomes – often at a more affordable cost.
Among ObamaCare’s few popular features, even among Republicans, is the mandate to cover adult children through age 26 on the insurance plans of their parents. Although sold as a gratuity, somebody must ultimately pay. In a working paper, Gopi Shah Goda and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford and Monica Farid of Harvard find “evidence that employees who were most affected by the mandate, namely employees at large firms, saw wage reductions of approximately $1,200 per year.”
Kentucky’s new Republican governor, Matt Bevin, has notified the Obama administration that he plans to dismantle the state’s ObamaCare marketplace. Bevin, who was sworn in last month, promised to scrap the marketplace, called Kynect, as part of his campaign, but he is now making it official. Bevin’s office said in a statement to WFPL News in Kentucky that having the state run the marketplace is a “redundancy.”
The health care law is gradually finding its niche as an entitlement for what the Census Bureau defines as the “working class”–lower middle-class families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but instead fall into the sweet spot of ObamaCare’s subsidies. Increasingly, these Americans will find themselves forcibly moved into ObamaCare, even if they currently have coverage sponsored by their employers.
A key number to watch from this year’s enrollment season is the percentage of enrollees who receive cost-sharing subsidies. It’s a fair bet that this will be the only number that rises by a notable margin over last year even as the rest of the program stalls. In the end, Americans are rational economic actors. Not only when it comes to who avoids the ObamaCare scheme, but who gets drawn into its grips.