Despite sharing a namesake, the Kaiser Family Foundation is not associated with healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente.
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Almost a third of the nation’s counties look likely to have just a single insurer offering health plans on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges next year, according to a new analysis, an industry pullback that adds to the challenges facing the law. Pulling out of a market that competitors gladly served wouldn’t hurt the government, or the residents of that market, for that matter. But some insurers have been granted much steeper, double-digit hikes for the policies. In this case, it means higher prices, fewer choices, and less control over one’s most private medical decisions.
To make up for the revenue lost by repealing this tax, Hillary Clinton suggests increasing taxes among the upper classes.
“Americans have a choice this election”. Commissioner Julie McPeak of TDCI responded in the hearing that increases were second-order effects of Obamacare, as healthy people left the pool of insured, costs per patient skyrocketed.
It has been a hard couple of weeks for President Obama’s health law. Along with mandating that health plans cover preventive care under the ACA, the Democratic Party’s reforms involve having insurers cover up to three sick visits yearly. “Other basic needs, such as clothing and food, have decreased”. Abandoned by more and more insurers, the exchanges – once billed as robust “marketplaces” – are becoming pitiful shadows of themselves.
UnitedHealth Group Inc UNH.N and Aetna Inc AET.N have chose to largely exit government-run online marketplaces in 2017 that sell subsidized plans created under President Barack Obama’s national healthcare reform law, citing low enrollment and high service costs.
Insurer departures will likely lead to higher prices, analysts have warned. A spokesman for Arizona’s state insurance regulator told The Wall Street Journal that no insurers have now filed to offer exchange plans in Pinal; there is still time, but not much, and the regulator can not force any insurer to step into the gap.
What to do? In the short term, Obamacare can be patched up by enlarging government subsidies for purchasing insurance, and ensuring that healthy Americans buy insurance, as the law requires.
Gallup also recently found the number of Americans who say they’re “satisfied” with the quality of their health care has dropped five percentage points since 2010. But allowing consumers to pick from a variety of government-controlled health insurance plans is not a true market; instead it is what the great economist Ludwig von Mises called “playing market”.
“We are proposing today a set of critical actions based upon our first three years’ experience that, if finalized, would improve how consumers and health plans interact with the Marketplace”, said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of CMS. On the marketplace, BlueCross BlueShield has asked the state Department of Insurance for a 62 percent increase.
Expand access to affordable health care to families regardless of immigration status. Ironically, those who suffer most from government intervention are the very people proponents of these programs claim to want to help.
Even her allies find this troublesome.
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The Trump campaign clearly believes that Donald Trump’s policy of taking Obamacare off the table is more likely to resonate with voters in November.
