Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) says that no matter who is elected president in November, the USA needs a Republican Congress next year “to avoid the near collapse” of the nation’s health insurance market. 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.
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“This exchange will allow you to one-stop shop for a health-care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose a plan that’s best for you and your family”, Obama said in a speech in 2009.
Aetna announced that it is pulling out of eleven of the 15 states where it now sells products on the ACA’s exchanges because of continued large financial losses from these products. Humana announced that it would drop coverage in all but 156 counties.
Evergreen Health was one of 23 co-ops, or consumer operated and oriented plans, that started under Obamacare. Obamacare is just making this structural problem more obvious.
Many insurers are losing money on the health plans they sell through the exchanges, and the fallout is coming into focus.
“The risks are a little bit higher than were expected for numerous plans in part because the rest of the insurance system has not unraveled as was expected”, Oliver said. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska said it lost $53 million previous year.
The administration estimates that 20 million people have gained coverage under the ACA. In plainer terms, sicker people who had been shut out of the healthcare system before Obamacare can now buy health insurance, which is leaving insurers with higher medical expenses than expected.
But it’s clear that something has to give.
In a letter to Justice Department officials [PDF], Aetna CEO Mark T. Bertolini said that the losses the company was experiencing by entering different exchanges made the situation untenable for the company.
Too few healthy Americans seek coverage through the exchanges. More than 8 out of 10 HealthCare.gov customers get subsidies covering about 70 percent of their total premiums.
For the first time, the department will reach out directly to Americans who had to pay the penalty for being uninsured in 2015.
In more than a dozen states, insurance companies have requested double-digit rate increases for next year. Aetna has proposed rate hikes of 16 percent for 2017 in Nebraska.
In a January 7 memo requesting an explanation from TDCI for the steep premium increases approved in 2015, Senator Green noted constituent complaints from within his district and recorded in press accounts from across the state due to premium increases “as great as 56 percent”. In California, where premium growth for insurance plans offered on the state’s exchange was relatively modest in 2015 and 2016, the average increase for 2017 will be 13 percent. And the insurance companies that went along with it got played for suckers.
It’s a foregone conclusion that nothing will be done to improve the system until after the election.
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After years of debating health care politics and policies, Americans remain divided over the 2010 law, which was passed without a single Republican vote when Democrats still controlled both houses of Congress.
