Category: Impact

Despite being designed to help the poor, certain aspects of Obamacare are holding millions of individuals back who fall into what is being called the “coverage gap.”

Reverend Vann R. Ellison, the president of the Florida based St. Matthew’s House, is trying to bring attention to the issue which he says affects people that fall between the $10,000 and $12,000 a year income range. St. Matthew’s House, which takes care of roughly 1,500 people, provides food and shelter to those individuals trying to work their way out of poverty.

“We generally deal with lower income people trying to get their lives together,” Ellison told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “These are people that can’t afford their own apartments.”

Those in that income range make too much to qualify for assistance under Obamacare but often times make too little to actually afford coverage or the fee that comes with not being covered. It’s an issue that impacts many of the lower income people Ellison is trying to help.

Although the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted 5 years ago, 2014 was the first year of implementation for most of the health law’s major provisions. In fact, it turned out to be a glitch machine. Defying the expectations of even the law’s most ardent critics, Obamacare’s rollout of the federal online health exchange was a disaster, combined with the cancellation of millions of private health insurance policies (if you “liked” your plan, too bad), a delay in reporting requirements of the employer mandate, and new administrative exemptions from the individual mandate penalty.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration’s allies insist that the law is “working” and that it will even become popular with the majority of Americans with the passage of time. The law’s congressional supporters, they hope, will reap political benefits rather than political retribution.

King vs. Burwell is on the horizon. If the plaintiffs are successful, so goes the theory, subsidies end in 37 exchanges operated by the Department of Health and Human Services and serviced by HealthCare.gov. Coverage gets more expensive, and people won’t be able to afford their policies.

But, this outcome was foretold all the way back in the Senate mark-up of the proposed ACA legislation. Purposely requiring subsidies in state-run exchanges remains the incentive for states to set them up. The administration did not expect so many states elected not to set up their own exchanges, and it is now a big problem. As was noted in 2009 by critics of the bill, if states don’t hand out subsidies, people won’t be able to afford to buy coverage.

In the health savings account industry, the problem is compounded. The ACA law also created a perpetual rule change engine. For example, every year HHS issues what’s called the Letter to Issuers letter to Federal-facilitated Marketplaces (FFMs), in which it discusses all of the fixes that need to be made to exchange operations. This year, HHS has proclaimed that we would all be better off if out-of-pocket maximums (OOPM) for “other than self-only coverage” were restricted to the OOPM for individuals or $6,850 for 2016.

During the 2008 financial crisis, “too big to fail” became a familiar phrase in the U.S. financial system. Now the U.S. health-care system is heading down the same path with a record number of hospital mergers and acquisitions—95 last year—some creating regional monopolies that, as in all monopolies, will likely result in higher prices from decreased competition.

Normally, market competition is good for consumers. More competition generally means competitors are battling each other to lower their prices and/or raise the quality of their goods. But when it comes to Obamacare, the market is working backwards, at least for people receiving health insurance subsidies through the exchanges. The more competitive the marketplace, often the more people have to pay for insurance.

How did this happen?

The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, created a series of exchanges where people can shop for health insurance if they don’t already receive it from the government (e.g. Medicare or Medicaid) or from their employer. The exchanges are a pro-market approach to healthcare reform. But they aren’t a simple market, by any means. In part, they are complicated because most people purchasing insurance through the exchanges receive subsidies. If you earn less than 400% of the federal poverty limit, you’ll probably qualify.

My son Benjamin has a serious growth hormone deficiency. He’ll be 13 years old in May but could easily pass for a boy of 8 or 9. In fact, many 8- and 9-year-olds are taller than him. He’s a full head shorter than all of his pals in seventh grade.

Although his mother and I don’t have medical degrees, we medical degrees, we had Benjamin’s diagnosis pegged when he was 3 years old and still wearing clothing for an 18-month-old.

Several trips to his pediatrician along with a couple simple tests to assess Benjamin’s bone age confirmed with data what we could see with our own eyes. Our boy wasn’t just in the bottom percentile in average height for kids his age – he was in the sub-basement

Doctors in the United States appear as bitterly divided over the Affordable Care Act as the general public.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also called Obamacare, has been a lightning rod since it was signed into law in 2010.

Five years after its enactment, the healthcare reform legislation still divides the American public. In a Gallup poll taken in early April, 50 percent of people surveyed said they disapprove of the act while 44 percent said they approve.

So, perhaps it’s no surprise that America’s 1 million doctors appear to be as split on Obamacare as the general public.

The Physicians Foundation released a survey last fall in which 20,000 doctors responded by email to an array of questions.

Of the respondents, 46 percent gave Obamacare a D or F grade, while 25 percent gave it an A or B grade.

In addition, two-thirds of those responding said they did not accept health insurance plans offered through the Affordable Care Act’s online insurance exchanges.

Those who oppose Obamacare say the survey is an accurate reflection of the country’s medical profession.

Those who support the law are quick to point out the survey was not a scientific poll. They say people who respond to email queries tend to be more critical than the general population.

House Committee on the Education and the Workforce
Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
Hearing on
“Five Years of Broken Promises:
How the President’s Health Care Law is Affecting America’s Workplaces”
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Members of the Committee,
My name is Tevi Troy, and I am the President of the American Health Policy Institute, adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, and a former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a former senior White House Domestic Policy Aide. The American Health Policy Institute is a 501(c)3 think tank dedicated to studying the issue of employer sponsored health insurance and highlighting the challenges employers face in offering care to their employees and their dependents. In addition to publishing a variety of studies on employer sponsored health insurance, the Institute also examines employer responses to these challenges and shares best practices from the most successful of these responses. These roles give the Institute a unique perspective on developments in employer sponsored health insurance, and enable it to make recommendations to both policymakers and business leaders regarding

Repealing the ACA’s individual mandate would result in 7 million fewer insured Americans in 2025 but would reduce federal spending on financial assistance by $191 billion, American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who backs axing the mandate, told the House Ways and Means health subcommittee Tuesday.

Has the effort peaked to sign up uninsured Americans for coverage? The announcement that the nonprofit organization Enroll America is laying off staff and redirecting its focus in the face of funding cuts comes amid inconsistent sign-ups during the second Affordable Care Act open-enrollment period and concerns about affordability.

A recent New York Times analysis compared Kaiser Family Foundation estimates of potential enrollees with sign-up data from the Department of Health and Human Services. While some states that signed up few people in 2014 recovered during the 2015 open enrollment, other states lagged: “California, the state with the most enrollments in 2014, increased them by only one percentage point this year, despite a big investment in outreach. New York improved by only two percentage points. Washington’s rates are unchanged.”

Most states could not post consistent gains in both open-enrollment periods. An official from Avalere Health, a consulting firm, told the Times that she was “starting to wonder if we’ve overestimated the whole thing.”