It’s been just over seven years since President Obama declared: “It is not sufficient for us simply to add more people to Medicare or Medicaid to increase the rolls, to increase coverage in the absence of cost controls and reform. Another way of putting it is we can’t simply put more people into a broken system that doesn’t work” [emphasis added].
Regrettably, the law he signed less than 10 months later fell far short of the president’s own benchmark as it relates to Medicaid. Not only did the ACA fail to impose any cost controls on Medicaid, it likewise contained no reforms to reverse or even corral the perverse incentives that for decades had simultaneously led to indefensible levels of Medicaid overspending even while creating enormous problems of access to the very people the program aimed to help. Instead, it amplified those incentives, making an already-bad situation even worse.
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Senate Democrats are escalating their attack on Republicans’ plans to repeal Obamacare this week, though their party remains divided on how far to take activists’ demands that they shut down the Senate in protest of the GOP’s dismantling of the Affordable Care Act.
Democratic senators are planning to hold the Senate floor until at least midnight on Monday to thrash Senate Republicans for refusing to hold committee hearings on their healthcare overhaul, according to several people familiar with the plan. The round of speeches is being organized by Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
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Insurers must submit applications by next Wednesday to sell plans through HealthCare.gov, and these will give us some of the first indicators of how high Obama Care costs will skyrocket in 2018. ObamaCare supporters can’t wait to blame the coming premium increases on the “uncertainty” caused by President Trump. But insurers faced the same uncertainty last year under President Obama.
Consider a recent press release from California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. He announced that “in light of the market instability created by President Trump’s continued undermining of the Affordable Care Act,” he would authorize insurers to file two sets of proposed rates for 2018—“Trump rates” and “ACA rates.” Among other sources of uncertainty, Mr. Jones’s office cited the possibility that the Trump administration will end cost-sharing reduction payments.
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Conservatives inside and outside the Senate GOP are sounding alarms over the emerging shape of the chamber’s bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a sign that the faction’s support may be increasingly difficult to secure.
Pressure from outside groups has intensified in recent days, and conservative lawmakers have signaled their concern that the Senate bill doesn’t do enough to curb spending on the Medicaid federal-state program for the poor or to reduce health-care premiums—two of their top goals.
“We’re not there yet,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a leading Senate conservative, said Thursday.
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Health care has been central to U.S. political debate for nearly a decade as Democrats created a new entitlement with little public support.
Compared to that effort, the Senate this time has been a model of deliberative democracy. On Dec. 19, 2009, a Saturday, then Majority Leader Harry Reid tossed the 2,100-page bill the Senate had spent that fall debating and offered a new bill drafted in an invitation-only back room. Democrats didn’t even pretend to care what was in it while passing it in the dead of night on Dec. 24, amid a snowstorm, in the first Christmas Eve vote since 1895.
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Obamacare provides states with a greater incentive to expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults than to cover services for individuals with disabilities. States receive a 95 percent match this year (declining to 90 percent in 2020 and all future years) to cover the able-bodied, but a match ranging from 50-75 percentto cover individuals with disabilities, while more than half a million are on waiting lists to receive home or attendant care.
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Section 1332 of the ACA permits states to submit simultaneous and combined “superwaivers” for Medicaid and for provisions of the ACA itself. These superwaivers could make it easier for states proposing plausible ways to allow states that serve Medicaid beneficiaries more efficiently to reprogram federal and state savings into health programs for non-Medicaid eligible households. For households with working, nondisabled adults, it should also be made easier for states to pool their federal and state funds for Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the ACA, and other programs to deliver coverage through private plans in the ACA exchanges. It is also time to allow states more flexibility in using Medicaid and other health care funds to invest in the social determinants of health—items such as adequate housing, school-based social services, improved lifestyles, and safer household environments, which can contribute to improved health and reduced medical costs.
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To estimate the impact of the AHCA, the CBO had to compare it to predictions of coverage under the current law, the ACA. If the prediction for the current law is incorrect the prediction of lost coverage will be too.Yet the CBO has consistently overestimated future ACA coverage gains. In 2012 it predicted an additional 28 million would gain health insurance by 2017. The actual figure is 20 million. It forecast 25 million would gain coverage on the ACA exchanges and 10 million would gain Medicaid coverage. Less than half as many actually enrolled on the exchanges and not all of them gained coverage – many were replacing non-exchange policies they lost after ACA passage. Conversely, about 14 million – 40 percent higher than predicted – newly enrolled in Medicaid. The CBO prediction that 5 million would lose employer coverage was also wrong – employer provided coverage was stable.
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The House-passed Obamacare repeal bill would leave 12.6 million more Americans uninsured over the next decade and reduce federal spending by $328 billion, according to an analysis released today by CMS’ Office of the Actuary.
The coverage estimate is well below the 23 million more uninsured that the CBO has projected under the American Health Care Act. The congressional scorekeeper additionally estimated that the American Health Care Act would reduce spending by only $119 billion over a decade.
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Senate Republicans raced Tuesday to bridge divisions over rickety insurance markets and billions of dollars in insurance subsidies in their pursuit of a health-care deal.
While President Donald Trump predicted a deal would emerge, hard work remained behind the scenes.
Much of this week’s negotiations have focused on specific measures to help shore up the individual insurance market, including billions of dollars in funding to smooth the transition to a new plan if they succeed in knocking down much of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, according to Republican aides.
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