The annual sign-up period for Obamacare begins in less than two weeks. He urged the new president and the next Congress to “take what we’ve learned over the past six years … and make the ACA better”.
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Repealing the law, as Republican lawmakers have attempted dozens of times, isn’t a way to improve the law going forward, Obama said. NPR’s Scott Horsley reports.
President Barack Obama said Obamacare isn’t ideal, but he believes his landmark health-care law is working during a speech at Miami Dade University Thursday – a claim GOP lawmakers immediately lambasted as false.
In Miami on Thursday afternoon, President Obama gave a speech ostensibly updating the American people on the status of his health-care law.
Yet Obama also conceded, “Just because a lot of the Republican criticism has proven to be false and politically motivated doesn’t mean there aren’t some legitimate concerns about how the law is working now”. Regardless of whether you believe Obamacare should be preserved, improved, or repealed, that’s bad for democracy.
OBAMA: Think about it.
“When one of these companies comes out with a new smartphone and it had a few bugs, what do they do?” They fix it. They upgrade it. Because insurance companies exist to make a profit, they have to make decisions about which markets they can adequately compete in.
With just a few weeks before the election and the final open-enrollment period of his administration, Obama acknowledged some problems with the Affordable Care Act, but said it has slowed the overall growth of healthcare costs, pushed the country’s uninsured rate to record lows and “has done what it was created to do”. “But if no private insurers are providing affordable insurance in an area, then the government would step in with a quality plan that people can afford”.
Still, millions of people buy individual policies outside of the health care law’s marketplaces and many of them will be hit with the full premium increases.
A crucial component of the healthcare system is young and healthy citizens (half of which the room was filled with), since their insurance plans pay for the old and sick, which have a profound effect on premiums.
In Minnesota, for instance, the 2017 insurance premiums in the marketplace for individuals are increasing by 50 percent to 67 percent. The administration hopes to counteract that by bringing more low-priced customers into the market. Most are part of the college’s honors college and received their invitations to the speech via email. The Department of Health and Human services is aiming for 1.1 million new enrollments, which it hopes will encourage more competition and reduce premiums.
HORSLEY: But it will take more than the president’s promotional efforts to cure what’s ailing Obamacare.
Maricopa County residents’ only health care option will be Centene Corp., which said it will sell its “Ambetter” plans at a 74.5 percent increase next year. These are all very familiar terrain to health insurance policymaking.
Today, AP employs the latest technology to collect and distribute content – we have daily uploads covering the latest and breaking news in the world of politics, sport and entertainment. “I just want it to work”.
OBAMA: They can even change the name of the law to Reagancare (ph). But beneath the wonky explanations lay several dark-one might even call them intolerant-undercurrents. Just as with Trump’s comments on the election in November, the only outcomes that matter to President Obama-and the only ideas he will acknowledge-are those in agreement with him.
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“Now that I’m leaving office, maybe Republicans can stop with the 60-something repeal votes they’ve taken and stop pretending that they have a serious alternative and stop pretending that all the awful things they said would happen have actually happened when they have not, and just work with the next president to smooth out the kinks”, he said. Republicans and Democrats have different approaches to health care policy and the presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have radically divergent positions on specific health programs.
