The end of Barack Obama’s presidency is near, and his most important domestic policy accomplishment is teetering and threatening to fall and smash to pieces. Obamacare, or at least the most-touted part of it, is failing, and for not for mere technical reasons. By expanding Medicaid, it got more people insured. But the president’s experiment…
DetailsBob Kocher and Ezekiel Emanuel, who worked in the Obama White House on health care reform, argue that it’s “misleading” to raise concerns about the fact that individual market health insurance premiums have nearly doubled under Obamacare. “Premiums today,” they say, “are 20% lower than the Congressional Budget Office predicted when the ACA was passed.” Their…
DetailsPresident 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…
DetailsMajor insurers participating in Obamacare have won approval for substantial premium hikes next year in a dozen or more states. The increases range as high as 30 percent to 50 percent, according to new data. Shaken by the decisions of Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield and other giants to pull out of many states…
DetailsUnder pressure to stabilize wobbly insurance markets nationwide, the Obama administration is making a new push to sign up Americans for health coverage through the Affordable Care Act, aiming to increase enrollment by about 1 million in 2017. With insurers canceling health plans or raising premiums by double digits in many parts of the country,…
DetailsAfter months of health insurer exits from the Affordable Care Act marketplace in Arizona, state regulators have approved plans from two companies that will be the only marketplace insurance providers next year. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona will sell marketplace plans in every county except Maricopa County in 2017. The Phoenix-based insurer’s average rates will increase 51 percent,…
DetailsThe 40% “Cadillac” Tax on expensive employer-sponsored health insurance is on a deathwatch because both parties in Congress dislike it. It would be best if Congress were to replace the Cadillac Tax with a simple and clear limitation on the tax preference for employer-paid premiums, as is called for the House GOP’s “Better Way” health plan.…
DetailsLess than half of the approximately 27 million uninsured people in the U.S. are eligible for federal financial assistance, an analysis released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows. Roughly 11.7 million, or 43 percent of that population, are not taking advantage of some sort of federal assistance to get health insurance that they are eligible for, according to the analysis. That…
DetailsAmid intense efforts by the Obama administration to target the uninsured in the U.S. president’s final months in the White House, sign-ups for health plans created under his signature domestic law are expected to rise by about 1 million next year. The forecast illustrates the administration’s confidence in enrolling more people and keeping those who…
DetailsIn the last moments of the final presidential debate Wednesday, the candidates used a question about entitlements to restate their positions on Obamacare. Donald Trump again vowed to “repeal and replace” the law and said that he was glad premiums had gone up, presumably to make his point that President Obama’s signature health care reform…
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