Overall, 46 percent of those surveyed view the ACA unfavorably compared to 40 percent who view it favorably. It includes a blistering attack on Republicans, who he says have tried to sabotage the health care law “through inadequate funding, opposition to routine technical corrections, excessive oversight and relentless litigation”.
Advertisement
Obama said spending on prescription drugs, which rose 12 percent in 2014, remains a problem, and he urged Congress to act on his proposal to increase transparency around manufacturers’ production and development costs. More recently, the association came out in favor of repealing IPAB and encouraged states that didn’t expand Medicaid under the ACA to find other ways to insure their uninsured residents. “This is by far the largest decline in the uninsured rate since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid five decades ago”, President Obama wrote.
He said for people with higher incomes, health plans sold on the government run exchanges are often still out of reach because of high premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
With increases in the cost of health insurance deductibles, and the increasing prevalence of cost-sharing for many healthcare services on insurance policies, many patients may delay or forgo care because they can not afford it.
Despite this progress, President Obama said, too many Americans still face challenges securing affordable and quality health care. Their supporters continue to tout them for cost-effective coverage, pointing to sources such as a recent report by the Government Accountability Office that found co-ops’ average monthly premiums in 2015 were below the averages for other plans in most areas.
Obama acknowledges that work remains to be done to make health care more affordable and to increase competition in the marketplaces where people purchase plans, including by offering a public option like Medicare where there are few insurance providers.
The president calls on Congress to take more steps to rein in the cost of prescription drugs and make government assistance more generous for those who still can not afford health coverage; he also urges the 19 states that have not yet expanded the Medicaid program under the health law to do so. “As a result, the majority of the country has benefited from competition in the Marketplaces, with 88 percent of enrollees living in counties with at least three issuers in 2016, which helps keep costs in these areas low”, Obama continued.
Reviving the idea on Monday, Obama said that a public plan – in places lacking competition – would give consumers more affordable options while also saving money for the government.
The public plan did not make it into final legislation for the ACA.
Many Republicans fiercely oppose the law, saying it has raised health coverage costs for Americans.
While couched in the suggestion that a public option would only be available in areas where the market is not competitive, it’s hard to see how a government-run health insurance program could be limited to specific geographic areas.
The White House, however, remains unimpressed with by the claim.
Advertisement
“President Obama also uses misleading figures to lament the cost of prescription drugs, while saying little about insurance companies actively pushing sick patients off their plans by increasing cost-sharing to unfathomable levels or refusing to cover drugs that patients need until it’s nearly too late”, Jim Greenwood, chief executive officer of Biotechnology Innovation Organization, an industry lobbying group, said in an e-mailed statement.
