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Federal regulators Thursday night extended the midnight deadline for Affordable Care Act insurance by four days, as consumers fought to get through to call center operators and log onto Healthcare.gov to buy insurance that takes effect Jan. 1. “Nearly a million consumers have left their contact information to hold their place in line,” Healthcare.gov CEO…

Donald Trump’s White House and congressional GOP leaders are coalescing around an agenda focused on slashing taxes and repealing Obamacare early next year, a blueprint that could potentially avoid an intraparty clash over infrastructure investment early in Trump’s presidency. On Wednesday morning, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said that the GOP will…

Next year, taxpayers will fork over nearly $10 billion more to cover double-digit premium hikes for subsidized health insurance under the ACA, according to a study from the Center for Health and Economy. The study estimates that the cost of premium subsidies under the ACA will rise from $32.8 billion currently to $42.6 billion. Under…

Republicans are searching for a way to capture savings from repealing Obamacare in a piggybank they could later use to fund a replacement. It’s not clear how or if such a maneuver would work, but if Republicans are successful, it could overcome the tricky political problem of paying for whatever health reform they try to…

It didn’t take long for Republican leadership in both houses of Congress to get over the shock of winning the election last month and start gaming out a repeal plan. The details remain under discussion, but House speaker Paul Ryan, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence (who is working closely with…

  In new research for the Mercatus Center, I argue that one of the central aims for the ACA replacement should be to reduce government bias toward comprehensive insurance. Policymakers should instead focus on realigning incentives, removing government mandates and regulations, and directing government financial support to consumers instead of to insurers and providers. Doing…

In a new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Senior Research Fellow Brian Blase notes that successful, sustainable reform must simultaneously improve healthcare quality and put downward pressure on prices. The only surefire way to achieve this is by replacing the ACA’s government-centric approach with a consumer-centric approach that realigns incentives, unleashes market forces, and…

Tennessee taxpayers, beware. President Obama’s administration is quietly implementing one last massive taxpayer-funded bailout for special interests. This bailout would prop up the Affordable Care Act only months before the law will likely be repealed. So which special interests are getting your money? Health-insurance companies. Six years ago, health insurers were some of the Affordable…

During 2015, the growth in both individual-market and employer-group coverage resulted in a net increase in private-market coverage of 2 million individuals. For individual-market policies, enrollment increased by a bit more than 1.12 million individuals. For the employer-group-coverage market, enrollment in fully insured plans declined by 932,000 individuals, while enrollment in self-insured plans increased by 1.86…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday indicated that Republicans won’t be putting forth their alternative to the Affordable Care Act before repealing parts of the health care law. “We’re going to move forward first, first with the Obamacare replacement resolution,” the Kentucky Republican said at a Capitol Hill press conference. “What comes next is…