When Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces launched in fall 2013, Arizona seemed like a success. Eight insurers competed to sign up consumers, offering a wide variety of plans and some of the lowest premiums in the country.
Today, with ACA enrollment starting Nov. 1, Arizonans will find in most counties only one insurer selling exchange plans for 2017. Premiums for some plans will be more than double this year, some of the biggest increases in the nation. Only last-minute maneuvering prevented one Arizona county from becoming the first in the nation to have no exchange insurers at all.
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As open enrollment starts Tuesday on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, consumers in some parts of the country are bracing for huge rate hikes, while many others are preparing to change insurers and likely doctors.
The crazy quilt of 2017 changes is creating angst among both supporters of the law and consumers under 65 who don’t get their insurance through work. And it comes as enrollment needs a big boost, especially of younger, healthier people to help offset insurers’ costs of covering the sicker people who have signed up so far.
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The cost of health insurance in the Obamacare exchanges is set to rise significantly in 2017. Here in Missouri, premiums are rising by over twenty points on average. But for the Show-Me State, that average rate increase only tells part of the story.
For one, the high cost of Obamacare-approved insurance plans isn’t hitting customers uniformly across the state; indeed, rural customers are far more likely to be charged more for health insurance than their urban peers, even within an “Affordable Care Act” marketplace.
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One of the most popular pieces of ObamaCare could be hurting the administration’s push to attract more young people into the wobbly marketplace, according to several people who helped shape the law.
The administration is staging campus enrollment drives and pouring money into Facebook and Instagram ads this year in an attempt to boost ObamaCare enrollment among young adults. The sign-up period begins Tuesday.
Yet there’s a fundamental flaw in the effort — and it has to do with ObamaCare’s design.
Because of the healthcare law, the White House says nearly 3 million young people under the age of 26 have been able to stay on their parents’ insurance plans and don’t have to shop for coverage on HealthCare.gov.
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In July analyst Paul Westra of the brokerage firm Stifel Nicolaus warned of a looming “restaurant recession,” noting that it might be the first sign of a more widespread U.S. recession in 2017. He said this in a bearish report that downgraded 11 restaurant stocks.
The facts on the ground support his gloomy forecast. Restaurant traffic has declined 2.8% from the start of the year through September, according to the Restaurant Industry Snapshot, a survey of some 25,000 restaurants by research firm TDn2K. At this pace, the firm said, “2016 would be the weakest annual performance since 2009, when the industry was recovering from the recession.”
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Rising health care costs have become the hallmark of a partisan Obamacare law that was sold with promises to lower them. The Obama White House just announced that health care premiums will rise again this year for millions of Americans by an almost unbelievable 25% under Obamacare. And that’s just a national average. Many Pennsylvanians face hikes in their health premiums as high as 55%; Oklahomans up to 69%, and Arizonans as much as 116%.
Behind these numbers are the stories of families and individuals struggling just to make ends meet already.
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The final Obamacare open enrollment of President Obama’s presidency starts Tuesday with enrollees facing fewer insurers and higher premiums for health coverage.
However, the impact will largely depend on where the enrollee lives, as some states are faring far worse than others in plan offerings and rates.
The administration wants to get 13.8 million people to sign up between Nov. 1 and Jan. 31, and it hopes about 11 million will pay for coverage throughout 2017. However, some experts doubt whether the administration can reach that goal because of higher plan costs.
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House lawmakers are angry that one of the last taxpayer-funded Obamacare plans wants to move to for-profit status, saying that the millions of dollars provided in startup loans were meant to go to nonprofits.
Republican leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee wrote to the Obama administration and the Maryland consumer-oriented and operated plan Evergreen Health, which wants to become a for-profit health insurer.
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President Barack Obama leaves the White House in 12 weeks, but the law that bears his name will polarize politics long after he’s gone.
On Tuesday the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced some tax benefits will increase in 2017 in order to adjust for inflation. According to the IRS the standard deduction for married couples in 2017 will be $12,700, up from $12,600, and both the earned income tax credit and the amount exempt from the estate tax will also see slight increases. The top individual tax rate will apply to those making $418,400 or more as opposed to $415,050 or more in 2016.
Yesterday the American Action Forum released an analysis of Donald Trump’s proposal to cut 70 to 80 percent of U.S. Regulations. The analysis finds that in order to achieve this goal, between $700 and $800 billion in regulatory costs would need to be cut. The analysis further shows that it would likely take a generation in order to accomplish this goal.
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