That may be one reason that the progress on covering the uninsured, though substantial, appears to be smaller than many experts predicted initially. The theory behind it is that overly generous health plans actually lead to over-utilization of healthcare and thus drive up costs.
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According to the Daily Caller, virtually everyone who pays for health insurance, regardless of whether it was obtained through the marketplace, will be affected by the tax.
Despite the name, the Affordable Care Act, many consumers have found that under the law their health insurance is anything but. We have data.
National Health Expenditure Projections ($ billions). In a vibrant, booming economy, the theory would likely work to some extent since employers would be competing for good employees – in this economy, not so much.
The results are consistent with multiple previous surveys that have documented a dramatic drop in the uninsured rate since Obamacare’s coverage expansion started taking effect in 2013.
The uninsured rate fell from 14.4 percent in 2013 to 9.2 percent in 2015, according to the CDC.
The report doesn’t identify a reason for the decline.
Congressmen Jim Langevin and David Cicilline are generally viewed as strong supporters of President Obama’s health law.
The ACA, known widely as Obamacare, takes several roads to getting more Americans covered by health insurance. All of these studies come with caveats, idiosyncrasies and uncertainty. A Gallup survey also published this week shows it’s resulted in large disparities in insurance coverage. In Arkansas, 22.5 percent of people lacked health insurance in 2013. Recently Blunt introduced the Health Care Safety Net Enhancement Act which would provide liability protection to emergency physicians who treat patients under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) federal mandate in emergency departments.
A survey that the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released at the end of July compared newly insured Californians with those who remained without coverage.
“Employers are coming to the table asking for cuts in benefits based on their preliminary projections around the tax”, said Shaun O’Brien, assistant policy director for health and retirement at the AFL-CIO, which supports a repeal of the tax. This legislation, which was signed into law in April 2014, puts mental health centers on more equal footing with other health centers by improving quality standards and expanding access. The law has also forced some people buying insurance on their own to pay higher premiums than they did previously, because insurers can no longer deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or sell policies that leave out benefits like prescriptions, rehabilitative services or maternity care.
The Daily Caller reports, “The tax was buried by congressional authors in section 9010 of the law and was envisioned as a way to raise future funds to pay for Obamacare”.
Senator Barrasso called the tax “another example of how the president’s health care law was designed so the most painful parts of the law kick in years later”.
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An economic rule is that when you subsidize something, you get more of it, including more under-employed people relying on subsidies for healthcare.
