The looming collapse of the Obamacare exchanges is prompting calls for even more government involvement in healthcare — even a single-payer system.
It takes a special kind of reasoning to respond to the spectacular failure of government that is Obamacare by calling for, well, even more government.
Obamacare is faltering. No matter who wins in November, the next president will face a genuine crisis of the current president’s making.
And it defies logic to attempt to correct this entirely predictable failure of government with “fixes” that give the federal government even more control over Americans’ healthcare.
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The president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) gives Obamacare a D+ for how it has performed in his state. In an interview with WRAL’s David Crabtree, BCBSNC CEO Brad Wilson conceded that he was a strict grader and that “on a good day” he might give the ACA a C+.
He acknowledged that the health law had provided coverage to 500,000 previously uninsured North Carolinians (“a very good thing”), but also warned that after two and a half years of operation, it was very clear that the financial underpinning of the Obamacare exchanges was not stable.
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Obamacare supporters will say that increasing premiums don’t matter because anyone getting a subsidy has their premium share capped and they are therefore insulated from these prices and the follow-on big rate increases. The worst that can happen to them is that they will have to shop for a lower cost plan.
Those shoppers may well have to settle for plans with bigger deductibles and narrower networks to keep their premiums flat.
But the bigger thing this argument is missing is that half of the individual market does not get a subsidy in order to buy Obamacare health plans. The CBO has estimated that in 2017 both on and off the exchanges 12 million will get subsidies and 12 million won’t.
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The Senate spending bill to fund the Department of Health and Human Services and the Labor Department in 2017 will maintain Affordable Care Act funding, according to a senior GOP aide.
“We will fund all of the things we need to fund to try to keep it bipartisan,” the aide told Morning Consult, adding that this means some Republicans, specifically Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), will accuse appropriators of funding Obamacare.
The Senate’s Appropriations subcommittee on labor and health will vote on the proposal Tuesday. The full committee is slated to advance the bill on Thursday.
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