A recent study by Express Scripts Holding found that about a quarter of Medicaid patients were prescribed an opioid in 2015. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson presents intriguing evidence that the Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare may be contributing to the rise in opioid abuse. According to a federal Health and Human Services analysis requested by the Senator, overdose deaths per million residents rose twice as fast in the 29 Medicaid expansion states—those that increased eligibility to 138% from 100% of the poverty line—than in the 21 non-expansion states between 2013 and 2015.
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In Iowa, the state’s sole remaining insurer announced on Thursday that it wants to boost ObamaCare premiums by 57%. This isn’t exactly the vibrant, competitive, low-cost market that Democrats promised. But it is the inevitable outcome of ObamaCare’s government-knows-best approach to health care.
Earlier this year, Aetna and Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield announced that they were pulling out of Iowa’s ObamaCare exchange, leaving only Medica, which was also threatening to leave. Not surprisingly, Medica has used its newfound monopoly status to push for increasingly higher rates, while trying to pin the blame President Trump for the increases.
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A majority of the public (57 percent) want to see Republicans in Congress work with Democrats to make improvements to the 2010 health care law, while smaller shares say they want to see Republicans in Congress continue working on their own plan to repeal and replace the ACA (21 percent) or move on from health care to work on other priorities (21 percent). However, about half of Republicans and Trump supporters would like to see Republicans in Congress keep working on a plan to repeal the ACA.
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Some strategists expect Democrats will consolidate around some form of single payer by 2020, though others won’t concede that as a given. The problem: most people don’t think a single payer system has a shot at becoming law anytime soon, and playing to the party’s base may ignore real concerns about affordability.
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The mere existence of ACA insurance policies can’t be the only metric for measuring the success of a major federal program. Another sensible measure of ACA success is the affordability of the policies being sold. For a broad spectrum of middle-aged persons in the middle class, premiums for even the cheapest bronze policy today are, in a majority of rating areas examined, so expensive that people are formally exempt from the individual mandate.
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