A new poll conducted for POLITICO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that 54 percent of likely voters think Obamacare is working poorly. Ninety-four percent of self-identified Donald Trump voters hold that view, while 79 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters believe the law is working well.
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Two weeks before Election Day, Obamacare is back big time.
Republicans capitalized on the Affordable Care Act’s unpopularity in 2010 and 2014 to retake both houses of Congress. But until now, the issue hadn’t ignited in a presidential campaign season dominated by the outsize personality of the GOP presidential nominee who has focused on trade, terrorism and ad hominem attacks.
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President Barack Obama delivered a robust defense of Obamacare on Thursday, but also acknowledged his signature domestic achievement needs fixes as premiums rise and insurers are fleeing the law.
Obama hailed the achievements of the federal health care law six years after passage, providing coverage to an additional 20 million Americans and reducing the uninsured rate to the lowest level ever recorded. And he sought to remind Americans that they likely benefit from the law’s consumer protections, even though just a small fraction of the country actually buys coverage from Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces.
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The debate over what’s wrong with Obamacare matters beyond this political cycle; what happens to the health care system in the next administration will be driven by what Americans think needs fixing. And while the headlines and stump speeches have focused on the struggles of the exchanges, the Affordable Care Act is quietly reshaping the entire system. It’s reining in the spiraling growth of health care costs, cutting by half the ranks of the uninsured, and providing a host of new protections and perks to the insured.
The political debate has been primarily detached from that transformation.
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The 18- to 34-year-olds who helped elect Barack Obama could consign his signature domestic policy achievement to failure.
That’s because not enough millennials have signed up for Obamacare to make it work well. Despite repeated outreach — including entreaties from all manner of celebrities, including NBA stars and Obama himself — young people make up less than 30 percent of Obamacare customers. he White House had set a goal of 40 percent in that age bracket to sustain a healthy marketplace because millennials tend to be healthier and, therefore, balance the costs of sicker, older customers.
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A liberal attempt to revive the public option is opening old wounds between the Democratic Party’s liberal and moderate wings. Thirty-three mostly-liberal Democrats, including all the Senate leadership, have signed onto a nonbinding Senate resolution to add the public option to Obamacare. But missing from the list are vice-presidential nominee, Sen. Tim Kaine and a half-dozen other moderates who face reelection in 2018. Kaine’s absence is especially striking since Hillary Clinton embraces the public option.
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Deep into the final year of his presidency, Barack Obama is working behind the scenes to secure Obamacare’s legacy, struggling to bolster a program whose ultimate success or failure will likely be determined by his successor.
With no lifeline coming from the divided Congress, Obama and his administration are redoubling their pleas for insurers to shore up the federal health care law and pushing uninsured Americans — especially younger ones — to sign up for coverage. The administration is nervously preparing for its final Obamacare open-enrollment season just a week before Election Day, amid a cascade of headlines about rising premiums, fleeing insurers and narrowing insurance options.
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The Cuomo administration late Friday announced emergency regulations that would upend the federal government’s risk adjustment program, a move meant to protect some of the state’s smaller players and keep them from bolting the still nascent small-group market created by the Affordable Care Act.
The move comes the same day as the deadline for health insurance companies to contract with New York State of Health, the state-run exchange that sells insurance to individuals and small groups, and follows threats from several insurers that said they would not sell small group plans in 2017 if changes to the program were not made.
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An Obamacare provision designed to inject a protective extra layer of competition into fledgling insurance markets fell into near-oblivion — and its failure has made Obamacare’s mounting challenges even more acute.
Under the unwieldy name of the Multi-State Plan Program, the federal government was supposed to contract with two private health plans, at least one a nonprofit. Each is required to offer coverage in all 50 states by next year. But it’s fallen short, reaching fewer states than anticipated, and offering plans that mirror options people already have.
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As insurers push large premium increases for 2017 Obamacare plans, some of the steepest hikes have been requested by insurers in crucial swing states that could determine control of the Senate.
In nine of 11 states with competitive Senate races, at least one insurer seeks to hike rates for Obamacare customers by at least 30 percent next year: Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield in Pennsylvania wants to jack up average premiums by more than 40 percent. In Wisconsin, three insurers have asked for rate hikes of more than 30 percent. In New Hampshire, two of the five carriers want to sell plans with rate increase above 30 percent.
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