House Republicans are questioning how much taxpayer money is going into federal subsidies meant to make insurance coverage more affordable for low-income Americans
Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.) and Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), all leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter Monday to Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, requesting information about the amount of taxpayer money that will go toward Obamacare subsidies next year.
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The Obama administration Monday confirmed a 25% average jump in premiums for the Affordable Care Act’s benchmark health plans and acknowledged later sign-up deadlines for hundreds of thousands of people whose insurers are dropping their plans because of rising costs.
Sharper increases had already been posted in states around the country. Market-leader insurers that are continuing to sell coverage through HealthCare.gov or a state equivalent have been granted average premium increases of 30% or more in Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi and Texas. In states including Arizona, Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, the approved rate increases for the market leader top 50%.
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The Affordable Care Act is in serious trouble, and the next president and Congress may well have to gut or replace it.
While many Affordable Care Act supporters remain optimistic, concerns are bipartisan. An article by two conservative writers proclaims, “ObamaCare’s Meltdown Has Arrived … half of Tennesseans covered under the plan are losing their coverage.” Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Mark Dayton says the law has “some serious blemishes and serious deficiencies” and is “no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.” Former President Bill Clinton said, “the people who are out there busting it … wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.”
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The Obama administration is trying to calm the panic over soaring ObamaCare premiums by pointing to subsidies many will receive to offset the cost — but analysts and GOP lawmakers counter that those subsidies nevertheless will stick taxpayers with a rising bill.
With enrollment set to begin Nov. 1, the administration announced Monday that premiums are set rise an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market. Some states, such as Arizona, will see premiums jump by as much as 116 percent.
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Democrats are increasingly acknowledging that the Affordable Care Act has an affordability problem.
Former President Bill Clinton said recently that people who are ineligible to get subsidies to buy ObamaCare insurance are “getting killed.”
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said this month that “the reality is the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable to increasing numbers of people.”
Even President Obama said in a speech last week that “there are going to be people who are hurt by premium increases.”
The 3.5 million uninsured people that the administration hopes will sign up for Obamacare this year generally worry about cost and may lack knowledge about the marketplace, according to analysts and advocates.
The Affordable Care Act has put the nation’s uninsured rate to a historic low, but there are still roughly 24 million uninsured people in the United States. Of that group, the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 10.7 million will be eligible for financial assistance this year. Officials expect about one-third of that group to sign up for an Obamacare plan during the three-month open enrollment period beginning Nov. 1.
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Donald Trump jumped Monday on an announcement that ObamaCare premiums will spike by double digits next year, saying “it’s over for ObamaCare.”
“In case you haven’t heard today’s news, it’s just been announced that Americans are going to experience yet another double-digit spike in your premium for ObamaCare and it doesn’t work,” Trump said at a rally in Tampa, Fla.
He was referring to the announcement from the Obama administration Monday that the benchmark ObamaCare plan’s premium will increase by 25 percent in 2017.
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President Obama took a health-care victory lap last week in Miami, celebrating “all the progress that we’ve made in controlling costs” and portraying the law’s critics as “false and politically motivated.” Does that apply to the actuaries at the Health and Human Services Department too? On Monday they reported that ObamaCare premiums will soar 25% on average next year, and this is “progress” all right, in the wrong direction.
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The core problem with President Obama’s most recent speech in defense of his health care law was not that he simply overestimated the merits of Obamacare. It’s that he refused to acknowledge that conservatives have reasonable disagreements with him about the direction of health care policy. President Obama claims that Republicans have offered no alternatives to the health care law when they have in fact outlined their own far-ranging plans for health policy. President Obama believes that only comprehensive insurance policies are real insurance. Conservatives generally believe, by contrast, that people should be free to buy cheaper policies that protect them only from financial catastrophes arising from their health needs.
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Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer, the administration confirmed Monday. That’s sure to stoke another “Obamacare” controversy days before a presidential election.
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
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