The Trump administration is not sabotaging the nation’s insurance system — it’s trying to make health plans more affordable. That’s the intent behind the administration’s recent proposal to expand access to short-term plans.
“These plans aren’t subject to many of the regulations that have sent exchange premiums soaring. As a result, they’re significantly cheaper. The average premium for a short-term individual plan at the end of 2016 was only $124 per month. Obamacare-compliant plans, on the other hand, cost an average of $393 per month.”
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New numbers on healthcare costs highlight, yet again, how much of a dereliction of duty it will be if congressional Republicans don’t take another crack this year at replacing Obamacare.
The Congressional Budget Office reported on Wednesday that premiums for the basic Obamacare plan will rise 15 percent next year, despite overall price inflation in the rest of the economy remaining at or below 2 percent.
The huge price hikes will not be a one-time thing, either. “Going forward, the agency projects premiums will increase an average of 10% a year between 2019 and 2023 and then 5% annually between 2024 and 2028,” reported CNN.
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Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday signed a law preserving a critical yet controversial part of the Affordable Care Act that President Donald Trump‘s administration repealed last year.
One of the laws creates a statewide individual mandate, which will require all New Jerseyans who don’t have health coverage through a government program like Medicare or their jobs to buy a policy, or pay a fee at tax time.
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In recent elections, Democrats have faced attacks related to health-care costs, with the party being blamed for premium increases on Affordable Care Act exchanges during the Obama years.
Now, as many health insurers are seeking to impose double-digit rate increases on those marketplaces, a number of recent surveys suggest Republicans may take the lion’s share of the blame, with Democrats viewed more favorably on the issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.
For example, 61% of voters said President Donald Trump and Republicans would be responsible for problems with the ACA going forward, according to a late 2017 Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
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Utah voters will decide on ballot measures to expand Medicaid and to legalize medical marijuana this fall.
Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox released Tuesday what measures will be on the ballot in the 2018 elections this November.
A measure to expand Medicaid under Obamacare got enough signatures to make it onto the ballot.
Activists behind the measure are hoping to have the same success as Maine, which approved the Medicaid expansion in a ballot measure last year. However, Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage has vowed to not abide by the ballot measure, prompting a lawsuit.
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The Obama administration said Tuesday that 11.7 million Americans now have private health insurance through federal and state marketplaces, with 86 percent of them receiving financial assistance from the federal government to help pay premiums.
About three-fourths of people with marketplace coverage — 8.8 million consumers — live in the 37 states served by HealthCare.gov, the website for the federal insurance exchange. The other 2.9 million people are in states that created and operate their own exchanges.
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Virginia is on the cusp of expanding Medicaid after the Senate on Wednesday narrowly approved a budget that would allow the state to cover as many as 400,000 low-income people.
The House, which already voted in favor of expansion earlier this year, will have to vote again before the bill can go to Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Northam has made expansion one of the top priorities of his administration.
When it passes, Virginia will become the 33rd state, along with Washington, D.C., to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare.
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People with ACA plans drop their plans at a much higher rate than in the pre-Obamacare era. The average monthly attrition rate under Obamacare in 2015 (3.6%) was nearly two-thirds higher than the average monthly attrition rate in the non-group market in 2006 (2.2%). This occurred even though 86% of Obamacare enrollees were receiving subsidized coverage. We can only imagine what would have happened had enrollees borne the full cost of their premiums (as was the case in 2006). The reality is that while the non-group market was never perfect, it performed much more smoothly before the ACA than most critics ever gave it credit.
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Alex Azar will soon make his most consequential decision as health and human services secretary. President Trump has asked HHS to expand health-insurance protections in a way that could make coverage more affordable and improve the outlook for Obama Care’s risk pools. Whether Mr. Azar will oblige is uncertain. Some officials don’t understand that Mr. Trump’s request would expand consumer protections, or mistakenly believe HHS lacks the authority to grant it.
The need for action is clear, as ObamaCare premiums keep skyrocketing. Rate hikes as high as 91% will hit many consumers just before Election Day. Maryland insurance commissioner Al Redmer warns ObamaCare is in “a death spiral.”
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The latest plan is being forged by leaders at the conservative think tanks Heritage Foundation and the Galen Institute, along with former senator Rick Santorum and Yuval Levin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They’ve been meeting regularly over the past eight months to craft a recommendation for Congress to repeal much of the ACA’s coverage requirements and taxes, turn over some of its spending to states through block grants and expand the use of tax-free health savings accounts.
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