Hillary Clinton’s “Medicare for More” plan certainly would cover more people — but it could also raise health-care costs for some current Obamacare customers if they aren’t careful.
Nearly 13 million Americans age 50 to 64 who lack insurance or buy private health plans would be eligible to buy into an expanded Medicare program that the Democratic presidential contender has proposed, according to an analysis released Thursday.
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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) says the proposals of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would add $19 trillion to the debt — an increase from its previous estimate.
In an analysis published in April, the CRFB estimated that the Independent senator’s proposals would add $2 trillion to $15 trillion to the debt, depending on the cost of Sanders’s single-payer healthcare plan. Since then, two new independent analyses have found that the healthcare plan “would cost dramatically more than the campaign-provided estimates suggest,” the CRFB said Thursday in its updated analysis.
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Most Americans enrolled in health plans through the Affordable Care Act are happy with their coverage. But consumers are increasingly concerned about their monthly premiums and deductibles, reflecting rising anxiety among all Americans about their medical and insurance bills, a new national survey found.
Nearly 6 in 10 working-age Americans who have a health plan through one of the marketplaces created by the law said they are satisfied with their monthly premiums, and just over half say they are satisfied with their deductibles.
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Let’s face it: When it comes to products most of us buy, health insurance is one of the least popular. And new survey results from the Kaiser Family Foundation out Friday morning find that sentiment reaching new lows.
Kaiser’s Larry Levitt said it makes perfect sense why consumers are feeling cranky about their coverage. “People are paying more, and in many cases getting less,” he said. The most obvious reason people aren’t psyched, Levitt said, is due to the explosion in health plans with high deductibles.
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Kaiser’s latest poll shows that people with ACA plans are generally satisfied with their coverage. Two-thirds say their coverage is excellent or good, but a growing number say it is only fair or poor. The poll reveals warning signs for the future: A diminishing number of participants feel their health insurance is a good value, those with high-deductible plans are most dissatisfied, and families feel it is increasingly difficult to pay off debt and save for the future.
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To see how vacuous the 2016 presidential campaign has become, consider just one issue: health reform. Exhibit 1: A new study from the liberal Urban Institute estimates that Bernie Sanders’s pet proposal for a single-payer health-care program would cost $32 trillion over the next decade. That’s right: $32 trillion! Exhibit 2: Continuing her strategy for bankrupting America just a little more slowly than Senator Sanders, Hillary Clinton is now calling for a Medicare “buy-in.” Exhibit 3: And Donald Trump’s plan for health-care reform is — well, who the heck knows? It would be helpful if, just for a little bit, we all paid attention to actual issues. Then again, given these three candidates and their proposals, maybe it’s bad news no matter what.
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Health plans are seeking double digit rate increases for their 2017 Obamacare plans—17.3% in New York, 25% in Michigan, 20% in Oregon, as examples. From special enrollment periods to countless exemptions, the Obama administration traded short term political gain for the long-term stability of the program and its risk pools. The big premium spikes for 2017 are an economic reckoning of this shortsightedness. The policy mistakes have compounded Obamacare’s woes. Fixing them will require more than regulatory tweaking.
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Health insurance is about to bear a higher price tag. Experts at the Kaiser Family Foundation just warned that premiums are likely to jump in 2017 — after increasing an average of more than 12 percent this year.
High-deductible health plans paired with tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts (HSA) have emerged as a source of a lower-cost refuge for patients, who accept the high deductible in exchange for lower premiums.
The Obama administration is trying to restrict access to HSAs. That’s a mistake. HSAs empower consumers to take control of their health care and reduce overall health spending in the process. Our leaders should be working to expand access to them, not narrow it.
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