With reduced carrier options for coverage, which means a reduced number of doctors who will accept enrollee insurance plans, and rising costs, it’s the people who can least afford to pay for their own coverage who are suffering and will suffer more as current trends continue.
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The state Insurance Department approved 13 health policy rate hikes Friday that far outstripped increases in recent years, averaging almost 25 percent for individuals and 13 percent for small groups.
The state Insurance Department approved double-digit rate increases for several individual and small group health insurance plans but denied rate requests from ConnectiCare Insurance Co. and Anthem Health Plans because they were determined to be “excessive”.
For example, a recent study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health compared health and health care measures over three years in three Southern states – Texas, which did not expand coverage, and Kentucky and Arkansas, which did.
So much for “affordable care”.
1-3 million uninsured young adults gained coverage under the ACA.
“After surviving numerous legal challenges and attacks by Republicans in Congress, plus a botched rollout in 2013, Obamacare now faces what is perhaps its most serious threat: The program is a clear money loser for the nation’s biggest insurance companies”. The consulting firm Avalere Health projects that seven states will have only one insurer in each of their marketplace regions next year.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, who favors repealing the federal health care law, issued a statement saying the rate increases “underscore the negative impact the president’s health care plan is having on Nebraska families”. The average high deductible plan has a deductible of around $5,000. The researchers examined qualified health plans from 109 insurers across 16 states for 2014, 2015, or both years to uncover the types and incidence of insurer exclusions that may disproportionately affect women’s coverage. “Because of the law, 20 million more Americans had quality, affordable coverage as of early 2016”.
Listening to most liberal commentators, it seems as if what we’ve witnessed is the best the Obama administration could have done.
The problems plaguing the health-care system are rooted in the treatment of health care as a “right”. People buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchange could be eligible for premium tax credits to make them cheaper.
But the truth is that there was an alternative to Obamacare.
There was a brief time in American politics when candidates could score points by promising to stand up for those who worked the hardest and were the most responsible with their finances, their families, and their personal health. In a 2008 study done by the group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the United States would have seen an immediate $350 billion decrease in health care costs if the legislation had been implemented. Bernie Sanders drew attention to this goal by strongly advocating for a single-payer insurance plan throughout the Democratic primaries. In 2016, it can be safely assumed that the cost savings would be even greater.
What has become clear, however, is that expanded access to health insurance such as proposed by the 3-Star Health Insurance Pilot proposal can be realistically expected to substantially improve the health care and the health status of uninsured Tennesseans.
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Private health insurance companies profit off of a lack of care. Insurers received funds to off-set costs from the expected high-cost claims of the newly insured. Either way, the goal of reform should be to provide truly universal and affordable health coverage to all Americans. So, it would make sense to actually eliminate or reduce that industry in order to promote the general welfare of the population. And clearly, access to health care is not the only factor that affects the health status of a population. “We’re constantly checking with insurers to see which drugs they cover and which they don’t”. Though he knew that private profits and the public interest could not be reconciled on the issue of healthcare, he (and his party) made a decision to bow to their whims anyway.
