Category: Impact

Given the damage wrought by Obamacare, it’s understandable that so many Americans want a comprehensive overhaul of our health sector. But single-payer is one of the few approaches to health policy with a worse track record than Obamacare. What proponents of government-run medicine ignore is that the policy has been an utter disaster everywhere it’s been tried—from Canada, to the UK, to America’s own experiment in single-payer care, the Veterans Health Administration. The only way to ensure that Americans have access to timely, affordable, high-quality care is by creating a competitive healthcare market—not a government healthcare monopoly.

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Although insurers have generally remained profitable overall since implementation of the Affordable Care Act, many companies participating in the individual market – where most of the major market reforms took place in 2014 – experienced substantial losses in this market in the early years of reform. The individual market is where just 7% of the U.S. population gets their insurance (and thus also represents a small share of most health insurers’ business), but the stability of the market and willingness of insurers to continue to participate is essential to the ACA’s success. Going into 2017, there were a number of high-profile exits and premium increases, raising concerns over the stability of the individual market. Although some local markets are likely fragile, the Congressional Budget Office expects the ACA individual market to remain stable across most part of the country.

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Nearly two-thirds of Republicans still want Congress to pursue health care reform, a new Morning Consult/POLITICO poll shows.

Among Republicans, 62 percent of registered voters want reform efforts to continue, versus just 30 percent who think lawmakers should stop. Among all voters, 51 percent said the GOP should move on to other efforts, while 37 percent said they want Congress to continue with health care reform.

There is no precise headcount of how many people have gained coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. And it is downright impossible to reliably estimate the number of people who might lose coverage if Congress repeals and replaces it. The “20 million” figure appears to have originated in a March 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That report declared that “the provisions of the ACA have resulted in gains in health insurance coverage for 20.0 million adults through early 2016.”

Estimates by the Heritage Foundation find that 14 million people (including children) gained public or private coverage in 2014 and 2015. Unlike government surveys, Heritage examined data from insurance company regulatory filings and from the government’s own headcount of Medicaid enrollment.

They found that 84% of the newly insured gained coverage through Medicaid and a related government program for low-income children.

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Republicans are talking about repeal-and-replace as “three pronged”—pass the current House bill, deregulation through Mr. Price’s executive action, and then measures that can later be attached to must-pass bills. Mr. Price’s letter is the beginning of prong two.

Republicans have an obligation to try to revitalize insurance markets, and not only because Americans depend on coverage. Repealing and replacing ObamaCare is also an opportunity to show that conservative ideas can work in health care. The reason the opposition is so furious is that liberals fear they might succeed.

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has substantially increased the number of Americans with public and private health insurance coverage. The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the ACA has resulted in 20 million additional nonelderly adults gaining coverage between the law’s enactment and February 2016. This estimate is likely overstated. Government surveys’ estimates of the number of people who gained coverage between December 2013 and December 2015 vary by 20 percent. Moreover, while the ASPE estimates that the ACA increased the number of young adult dependents with insurance coverage between 2010 and 2013 by 2.3 million, data from government surveys indicate that 1.2 million fewer dependent children had private coverage in 2013 than in 2010, offsetting half the gain in coverage among older dependents. Coverage gains have nonetheless been significant, with most of the increase coming from enrollment surges in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance programs. But a substantial proportion of those who have enrolled in these public programs since 2014 met eligibility standards that predated the ACA. This increase in public coverage may have crowded out private coverage, although further study is needed to determine the existence and magnitude of this effect.

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With the passage of the ACA, Congress promised Americans that they would be able to keep the plans and doctors they like while paying less for health insurance and healthcare overall. Seven years later, many Americans have fewer choices when it comes to health decisions and are paying more for care and insurance. The State Policy Network has compiled stories from around the country that highlight state and local challenges and represent the need for a state-based approach that unleashes innovation in health care based upon the needs of citizens.

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Republicans are nervous about repealing ObamaCare’s supposed ban on discrimination against patients with pre-existing conditions. But a new study by Harvard and the University of Texas-Austin finds those rules penalize high-quality coverage for the sick, reward insurers who slash coverage for the sick, and leave patients unable to obtain adequate insurance.

The researchers estimate a patient with multiple sclerosis, for example, might file $61,000 in claims. ObamaCare’s rules let MS patients buy coverage for far less, forcing insurers to take a loss on every MS patient. That creates “an incentive to avoid enrolling people who are in worse health” by making policies “unattractive to people with expensive health conditions,” the Kaiser Family Foundation explains.

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Many Obamacare supporters claim the law has expanded health coverage to upwards of 20 million Americans, but new data shows that isn’t accurate.

As part of Congress’ continued push to repeal Obamacare, the House Budget Committee held a hearing this week titled “The Failures of Obamacare: Harmful Effects and Broken Promises.”

Heritage Foundation expert Ed Haislmaier was one of four expert witnesses who testified.

Haislmaier presented new data regarding gains in health coverage since the full implementation of Obamacare began in 2014.

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While the final figures will be somewhat different once the more complete end of year data is available, at this point it is reasonable to expect that for the three-year period of 2014 through 2016, the net increase in health insurance enrollment was 16.5 million individuals. Of that figure, 13.8 million were added to Medicaid and 2.7 million were the net increase in private-sector coverage enrollment.

In general, enrollment data indicate that the implementation of the ACA appears to have had three effects on health insurance coverage: (1) a substantial increase in individual-market enrollment; (2) an offsetting decline in fully insured employer-group plan enrollment; and (3) a significant increase in Medicaid enrollment in states that adopted the ACA Medicaid expansion.

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