The cost of expanding Medicaid under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is rising faster than expected in many states, causing budget anxieties and political misgivings.
Far more people than projected are signing up under the new, more relaxed eligibility requirements, and their health care costs are running higher than anticipated, in part because the new enrollees are apparently sicker than expected. Rising drug prices may also be a factor.
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When Bill Clinton emerges as an ObamaCare critic and even President Obama admits in a recent interview that his entitlement has “got real problems,” the discipline of the law’s apologists must be fading. The question now is whether Republicans can capitalize to improve U.S. health care from its ObamaCare bottom. The balance of political power will be crucial in 2017 because ObamaCare will have to be rewritten. Trump’s opportunity would be that ObamaCare legally empowers the Health and Human Services Secretary to loosen regulations if a President concludes that they “destabilize” health markets. As for Clinton, she’d need GOP help in Congress unless she wants to preside over a bigger mess.
For weeks, rumors have been flying that WikiLeaks would deliver an “October surprise” for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a bombshell revelation that she would struggle to recover from in the short weeks remaining until the election. (So far, it’s a dud — surprise!)
But Clinton should be worried about a “November surprise” — the wave of policy cancellations and rate hikes that will attend the debut of Obamacare’s fourth open-enrollment period, on Nov. 1. Just a week before Election Day.
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The Obama administration is seeking to toss out a pair of high-profile healthcare lawsuits in which insurers claim they are owed millions of dollars under the Affordable Care Act.
The two insurers, Moda Healthcare and BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, have sued the federal government over a combined $338 million in ObamaCare payments they argue are overdue.
The Justice Department filed motions to dismiss both lawsuits on Friday, arguing that the federal government isn’t responsible for those payments at all.
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As Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and most Senate Democrats coalesce around a government-run insurance agency as part of the solution to Obamacare cost woes, a large problem remains unaddressed: Insurers hate the public option.
Democrats, including the Clinton campaign, are showing little sympathy.
In recent months, several insurance plans have pulled out of Obamacare exchanges, citing losses. Many areas of the country will see double-digit premium increases in 2017 as insurers try to recoup their losses and bring rates in line with medical claims. The insurance industry has made it clear that participating in exchanges has, thus far, not been easy.
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Evergreen Health, Maryland’s version of the innovative nonprofit insurers created under the Affordable Care Act, decided Monday to become a for-profit company to avoid the possibility of a shutdown, according to its chief executive.
If the switch is approved as expected by federal and state officials, Evergreen’s unprecedented move will leave standing only five of the 23 co-ops, or Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans, which started nearly three years ago.
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Many variables remain up in the air as we contemplate what Obamacare would look like without functioning exchanges, but the failure of the exchanges in some states might provide an opportunity to amend and improve upon the ACA, and move the American health care system towards a freer market system where individuals are free to enroll in any health insurance plan that is for sale, and where insurers have the freedom to sell the plans that are the most appealing to potential buyers. Treating markets where the ACA has failed as opportunities rather than crises might be the first step in achieving sustainable health care reform.
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South Carolina became the fifth state to have only one company offering health insurance through its Affordable Care Act exchange.
The South Carolina Department of Insurance announced on Tuesday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina will be the sole provider for South Carolinians looking to get covered through the ACA, better known as Obamacare, according to The Post and Courier.
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The Affordable Care Act hasn’t done much to change trends of low-income people seeing changes in their health insurance coverage, a new study finds.
About a quarter of low-income adults in three states have experienced a change in their health insurance coverage, known as “churning” under the Affordable Care Act, according to a study released today by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the journal Health Affairs. Maintaining insurance coverage over time can remain difficult under the law, the researchers found.
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The 18- to 34-year-olds who helped elect Barack Obama could consign his signature domestic policy achievement to failure.
That’s because not enough millennials have signed up for Obamacare to make it work well. Despite repeated outreach — including entreaties from all manner of celebrities, including NBA stars and Obama himself — young people make up less than 30 percent of Obamacare customers. he White House had set a goal of 40 percent in that age bracket to sustain a healthy marketplace because millennials tend to be healthier and, therefore, balance the costs of sicker, older customers.
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