Health care experts on both sides of the aisle projected the next Congress may tie reforms to Obamacare to other legislative efforts, speaking Tuesday at a National Coalition on Health Care forum. Conservatives on the panel suggested any negotiations would be tied to how willing both parties are to compromise. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, suggested GOP priorities such as tax reform or adjusting how the federal government addresses poverty could address health care in some way if the next administration and Senate are willing to acknowledge them and make trades. Joseph Antos, a health analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed, saying adjustments would be possible based on how much the incoming administration is willing to negotiate with Congress.
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Marilyn Tavenner, the face of private insurers, does not think Affordable Care Act exchanges are about to implode. But she does think Congress will have to make some tough decisions relatively soon about how much to buffer insurers from risk.
“I do not think the exchanges are in a death spiral. I do think they’re unstable, and we have a responsibility to stabilize them,” said Tavenner, president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, in an interview with Morning Consult. “That’s on all of us.”
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Obamacare will likely see a “significant slowdown” in enrollment next year, a Thursday analysis from S&P Global Ratings projects.
The report suggests effectuated marketplace enrollment will range between 10.2 million and 11.6 million in 2017. The analysts say their forecast “is clearly a bump in the road, but doesn’t signal ‘game over’ for the marketplace.”
“The marketplace would benefit from growth in enrollment, especially if it helps improve the morbidity of the risk pool. But 2017 will likely not be the year the marketplace sees significant expansion,” the report says.
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More than 50 conservative groups are asking lawmakers to block payments to insurers under Obamacare they say would be a “bailout” of insurance companies.
The groups, which include Freedom Partners, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform and Heritage Action, are calling on Congress in a Wednesday letter to block payments using taxpayer money from going to insurers under two Affordable Care Act programs.
The groups want Congress to recoup $5 billion they say was illegally given to insurance companies experiences greater losses than expected under the law’s reinsurance program and are urging lawmakers to pass a measure blocking future payments from a “Judgement Fund” to settle insurer lawsuits under the law’s risk corridor program.
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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s updated health care proposals narrow what the Republican presidential nominee had previously proposed regarding health care, but his campaign still has not offered details about how such reforms would work.
Trump’s health care proposals outlined online, which were recently updated with little fanfare and still linkto his pervious proposals, say he would replace the Affordable Care Act with health savings accounts if elected to the presidency. He’s previously said people should be allowed to use health savings accounts that are tax-free and can accumulate, and that could be passed on to heirs when they die, saying the “flexibility and security provided by HSAs will be of great benefit to all who participate.”
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As Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and most Senate Democrats coalesce around a government-run insurance agency as part of the solution to Obamacare cost woes, a large problem remains unaddressed: Insurers hate the public option.
Democrats, including the Clinton campaign, are showing little sympathy.
In recent months, several insurance plans have pulled out of Obamacare exchanges, citing losses. Many areas of the country will see double-digit premium increases in 2017 as insurers try to recoup their losses and bring rates in line with medical claims. The insurance industry has made it clear that participating in exchanges has, thus far, not been easy.
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The Affordable Care Act hasn’t done much to change trends of low-income people seeing changes in their health insurance coverage, a new study finds.
About a quarter of low-income adults in three states have experienced a change in their health insurance coverage, known as “churning” under the Affordable Care Act, according to a study released today by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the journal Health Affairs. Maintaining insurance coverage over time can remain difficult under the law, the researchers found.
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A majority of American adults oppose a potential “bailout” of the insurance industry, according to a poll released today by Freedom Partners.
Of those surveyed, 55 percent of adults said they were opposed to the administration using taxpayer money to direct funds to insurance companies reporting losses on the Affordable Care Act markets.
President Obama says his signature domestic policy, the Affordable Care Act, needs some fixes.
“In my mind the [Affordable Care Act] has been a huge success, but it’s got real problems,” Obama said in an interview with New York Magazine published Sunday.
The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, created a new marketplace, known as the exchanges, which many insurers have struggled to adapt to. Several insurers have said they won’t offer marketplace plans next year, and the retreat of major insurers including UnitedHealth, Aetna and Humana in recent months have highlighted some of the shortfalls of the law.
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Minnesota’s commerce commissioner called for reforms to strengthen the federal marketplace Friday after announcing monthly premium increases of at least 50 percent for 2017.
“While federal tax credits will help make monthly premiums more affordable for many Minnesotans, these rising insurance rates are both unsustainable and unfair,” Minnesota Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman said in a statement. “Middle-class Minnesotans in particular are being crushed by the heavy burden of these costs. There is a clear and urgent need for reform to protect Minnesota consumers who purchase their own health insurance.”
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