Most of the remaining non-elderly uninsured people in the U.S. likely won’t gain coverage, a new study released this week suggests.
The study, from the Urban Institute says that while some higher-income people who are uninsured will surely gain coverage as the penalties for not having insurance increase, the possibility for increased coverage is actually lower among those who have higher incomes than those who are eligible for financial assistance to cover insurance.
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The justices heard oral arguments in the case just last week. Now they are asking the parties to address how employees would obtain contraceptive coverage through their employer’s insurance companies without any involvement from the employer, including notifying the government, their insurer, or third-party administrator of their objection.
The parties have the opportunity to spell out for the Supreme Court how such a system could work without controlling the Little Sisters’ and other employers’ insurance plans.
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Birthdays usually represent a time for celebration. But when it comes to Obamacare’s sixth birthday, partying is the last thing on Arizonans’ minds.
Six years after the so-called Affordable Care Act was signed into law, President Obama’s litany of failed promises continue to add up. Despite all his assurances, Americans who liked their health care plans couldn’t keep them, premiums have gone up – not down – and taxes continue to multiply.
That’s why it is no surprise that a February poll by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found only 15 percent of people say that they have personally benefited from Obamacare, while 25 percent allege they have been personally harmed by the law.
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President Obama and the Supreme Court have effectively replaced the ACA with something we now call “ObamaCare.”
Unfortunately, ObamaCare doesn’t work much better than the ACA. ObamaCare is still causing Americans to lose their health plans, still driving premiums higher, and still causing their coverage to erode.
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Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey Wednesday, which revealed among Republicans, 26 percent named Donald Trump as the candidate they most trust to represent their views on the health care, while 21 percent picked Ted Cruz. Fewer registered Republicans named John Kasich. Independents surveyed were more likely to choose either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders than a Republican candidate, the report says.
Overall, the survey shows, health care is an important issue to a majority of registered voters.
There’s much more to fix in the health care system than the lack of price and quality information. And given the status quo of blunt benefit designs, the benefits of greater transparency may be limited. But transparency initiatives can and should help improve insurance benefit designs, directing patients to more cost-effective providers. This can happen with or without patients spending their own money.
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Most of the criticism of Obamacare by its right-of-center opponents has focused on its regulatory mandates, botched implementation and rising premiums for less-favored purchasers. Far less attention has been paid to how little the new health law accomplished in fulfilling its advocates’ promises to boost the growth of small business and new entrepreneurial start-up firms.
The Bureau of Commercereports that new business formation inched up slightly for a few years from its low point in 2010 – after four years of decline. But its 2013 figure of 406,000 new businesses remains far below the recent pre-recession peak number of 560,000 in 2006.
Similar measures of entrepreneurial activity by the Kauffman Foundation find modest evidence of recent upticks, but levels still below historical norms.
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Congress’ decision to suspend the Affordable Care Act’s tax on health insurers for one year will cost the government $13.9 billion, funding that normally would go to cover subsidies for low-income enrollees and other functions of the law.
The CMS, therefore, expects insurance companies to keep their premiums in check when they file 2017 rates this spring. The hope is the one-year tax reprieve will put a ceiling on premium increases and push savings to consumers instead of into the coffers of health insurers.
“Because the fee is not being collected for the 2017 fee year, administrative costs for plans in all impacted markets are expected to be adjusted appropriately to account for the moratorium,” the CMS said in a document posted Monday.
Transitional Reinsurance is a key part of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a component of a set of provisions designed to lure private health insurers into selling insurance on various Exchanges. Without continued private insurer participation, Obamacare as we know it falls apart. Congress thought it needed lures (1) because health insurers did not have much experience with the medical expenses of the population they would be insuring and (2) because Congress was outlawing health insurers’ favorite technique for staying profitable: pricing policies according to the predicted medical expenses of the insured. Congress set the hook by giving insurers selling on the Exchanges something for free that they otherwise would have to pay for: reinsurance. With “Transitional Reinsurance” The federal government would itself pick up the bill three years for much of the expense of insureds who ended up having high medical expenses.
But, as with lunch, there is really no such thing as free reinsurance.
Donald Trump had a complete meltdown Thursday night when he got locked in this exchange with Marco Rubio over health care. Rubio kept pressing him on what his plan for health care was, and Trump responded by incoherently talking about getting rid of “the lines around the states.” Essentially, Trump wants to increase competition by allowing insurers to sell plans across state lines without regard to the states’s own insurance regulations.
Setting aside the fact that Trump’s understanding of health care policy is woefully inadequate, his one idea on health care isn’t even a good one. Granted, this is an idea a lot of Republicans have floated and, in theory, increased insurance competition is needed and state insurance regulations are often an impediment to this. But in practice, the idea runs into the buzzsaw of federalism.