As ObamaCare continues to collapse, options for quality, affordable health care move further out of reach for many Americans. This week, Senator Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and other Senate Democrats plan to offer their solution: a complete Washington takeover of America’s health care system. A majority of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have signed…
Details“Single-payer” is a broadly popular slogan that papers over intraparty disagreements and wrenching policy choices. A recent survey by Kaiser found that initial support for single-payer dropped by about a third when supporters were told of criticisms that it might increase their taxes, give the government “too much control” over health care or eliminate the ACA. Each…
DetailsThis brief describes alternative forms of subsidized reinsurance and the mechanisms by which they spread risk and reduce premiums. For a given amount of funding, a particular program’s efficacy will depend on how it affects insurers’ risk and the risk margins built into premiums, incentives for selecting or avoiding risks, incentives for coordinating and managing…
DetailsNavigator groups that help educate and enroll consumers in the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges are shutting down because the federal government isn’t paying them. Several navigator organizations, including the University of South Florida, which received the country’s largest federal grant for navigation services in 2016, are suspending education and outreach activities ahead of the…
DetailsHow do you define “single payer”? A common theme is to give government a dominant role in the pricing and possibly delivery of services—supporters often assert that some measure of cost would be reduced. The Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center says that Bernie Sanders’ previous proposal in 2016 would have increased federal costs by $32 trillion over…
DetailsTwo Republican senators are launching yet another attempt at repealing Obamacare, preparing to offer legislation that would try to bridge one of the key dividing elements of an effort that has twice failed to pass the senate, according to a section-by-section analysis obtained by NBC News. It’s too early to gauge whether or not the…
DetailsHalf of Virginia’s counties now are on track to have no health insurers offering Obamacare plans in 2018 after an insurer reversed a decision to sell individual health coverage in much of the state. The pullback by Optima Health in Virginia ends a brief, two-week period in which every county in the United States was projected to…
DetailsOhio Gov. John Kasich on Friday said that some of the essential health benefits that had been set up under Obamacare were too limiting to customers, proposing that someone have the option to buy a plan that excludes maternity coverage while explaining his decision to mandate autism coverage in his state. Kasich, a Republican, was…
Details“While most reasonable people would welcome a bipartisan outcome to the Obamacare mess, the solutions proffered thus far would do little more than shore up the bad policies already in place with another slate of bad policies. We need legitimate, long-term reforms,” argues Sen. Hatch. “Case in point: Some are working on an approach that…
DetailsThe Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt says, “States actually have a lot flexibility in theory under current waivers, but the guardrails are very hard to meet, which limits the amount of flexibility in practice.” During the repeal-and-replace effort, Republicans wanted to remove some of those “guardrails”—allowing states to chip away more substantively at some of…
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