Category: Essential Benefits under the ACA
Medicare Turns Health-Care Prices Into a Guessing Game – WSJ
Analysis of the ACA: A Public Policy “Devil in the Details”
Individual Health Shrinkage Drives Up Uninsured Rate: CBO Data
~Enrollment in every other major type of coverage grew or held steady~
The subtitle in the article above is correct: Enrollment in every other major type of coverage grew or held steady.
But this should not surprise anyone.
“Why“ the other major types of coverage increased, is the more important question. And examining this also reveals that the real, or net, uninsured rate probably went up much less than 5%.
The CBO data, based on their own definition of “insurance”, was destined to over-state the number of uninsured based on these data…
“CBO includes only major medical insurance that meets ACA minimum essential coverage standards in that definition. It excludes people who belong to health care cost sharing ministries. It also excludes people who are using products such as short-term health insurance as alternatives to major medical coverage.”
Nor does the number of “uninsured” mean that those folks went without care, especially those who might have cash-friendly Primary Care providers, or a Direct Primary Care physician.
And, as premiums continue to rise in the individual market we will see a shift from Unsubsidized plans to subsidized plan; and just as the data indicates we’ve witnessed a 300,000 shift in that direction.
Let’s examine some recent history as a perspective.
The first two enrollment periods after implementation of ACA in late 2013 and 2014, which also corresponded to economic recovery (no cause and effect) showed that the largest portion of newly insured (following the nadir of the uninsured rate) came from the Employer group market as hiring increased; and the second largest portion came from Medicaid and the smallest percentage from the individual market in form of ACA exchanges.
When you measure the effects directly attributable to ACA, the largest percent gains in insured rate have come from new Medicaid, followed by subsidized ACA plans. This is a crowd-out phenomenon at work, catalyzed by subsidized coverage (Medicaid expansion) on one end and rising premium prices in the Individual market on the other.
This is horrible public policy as it doesn’t promote insurance to be more affordable or efficient, it simply shifts the burden to the public sector while making premiums more expensive. And those premium increases are a direct result of regulations placed on the Individual Market: Community Rating, guaranteed issue and compression of the age ratios to 3:1, in an attempt to force it to “behave” more like the group market.
So does it really make sense to purposefully, by design, cause the price of insurance to rise and then turn around and subsidize the same product to make it “affordable”? I guess we know how they justify the name… Affordable Care Act… but there certainly isn’t any buyer protection from soaring prices!
All of which goes to show, that the net effect of the ACA has been to make the individual market UNAFFORDABLE which effectively shunts the demand into gov’t sponsored and/or subsidized coverage!
This is NOT a sound healthcare policy. But it is a very effective form of legal plunder accomplished by using the law to benefit a few special interests at the expense of the many.
Obamacare is now optional
“Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.
You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.
The benefits of Wednesday’s announcement are substantial. Various organizations, including some that oppose the new rule, project it will cover one million to 2.3 million previously uninsured Americans. Projections by Medicare’s chief actuary indicate it will reduce premiums for millions more by an average of 30 percent.
The policy change also promises more secure coverage for the sick. It frees consumers to avoid Obamacare’s price controls, which are eroding coverage for the sick. Instead, consumers can purchase consecutive short-term plans, tied together with renewal guarantees that protect them from medical underwriting when they fall ill.
Renewal guarantees can even protect some 200 million consumers with employer-based coverage, or no health insurance, from medical underwriting — for just one-tenth the cost of Obamacare plans.
When Congress passed Obamacare, insurers had just begun selling renewal guarantees as a standalone product. These policies gave purchasers the right to enroll in a health insurance plan whenever they wanted, at healthy-person premiums, no matter how sick they got in the meantime, and cost roughly 90 percent less than the average Obamacare premium. Twenty-five states approved this marvelous innovation for sale before Obama unilaterally banned it. Wednesday’s rule makes this and further innovations possible again.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/obamacare-is-now-optional
Healthcare: What to Watch For
“…it is important for employers to be fully aware of what the regulations may impact them to safeguard against inadvertently putting themselves, or their employees, in an untenable situation.
It is important for an employer looking to offer an unconventional or untraditional benefit package to speak with an independent health plan attorney or CPA (not employed by the agency selling the program) regarding potential liability and compliance with federal and state laws regarding employer sponsored health plans.
Can your employee afford to reimburse the IRS for taxes not collected on an inappropriately structured HSA? Can your business afford a fine of $100 per day per employee for every day that the unqualified arrangement was offered? These are just some of the potential liabilities.”
Watch “Whole Foods’ John Mackey: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism” on YouTube
Who Wouldn’t Have Coverage If the Obamacare Mandate Is Repealed | The Heritage Foundation
…a recent review of the academic literature on the subject finds a mixed bag, but with the strongest link between coverage and health outcomes in cases where health insurance coverage improves access to care, “particularly among people with lower incomes and chronic conditions.”
That makes sense. Having health insurance makes less of a difference to people with higher incomes who can afford to pay for more of their medical care directly.
That leads us to the crucial, practical question that this academic debate largely misses: Who are the people that would no longer have health insurance if the mandate penalty were repealed?
Notice what CBO is not saying. CBO is not saying that those Americans will “lose” coverage. Rather, CBO is saying is that—absent the mandate penalties—those Americans, will voluntarily forego enrolling in health coverage. CBO is explicit on this point…
That explains CBO’s somewhat counterintuitive projection that, without a mandate penalty, millions of poor people will turn down the offer of free Medicaid coverage. The reason is that they don’t think they need it (because they are healthy) and if they become ill and seek care at a hospital, they know the hospital will enroll them in Medicaid to get paid. Indeed, it is also why, long before Obamacare came along, that there was a persistent and notable gap between the number of people eligible for Medicaid and the number of people enrolled in the program.
It also explains CBO’s other counterintuitive projection: that eliminating the mandate penalty will generate higher tax revenues. While not collecting mandate penalties brings in less revenue, CBO projects that there will be new revenues coming from the healthy people who decide to turn down tax-free employer health insurance in exchange for higher (taxable) cash wages. Presumably, CBO thinks that being healthy and very much alive are basic prerequisites for expecting those folks to generate additional tax revenues.
Repeal of the Obamacare mandate will not result in social catastrophe. Supporters of the mandate would have a more compelling argument if millions of poor and sick persons would be thrown out of their existing coverage, struggling with potentially fatal chronic illnesses and unable to get insurance to maintain continuous access to regular care. But that is not what CBO is projecting. Their argument is hardly compelling, to say the least, when the cohort of the future uninsured are healthy people who simply choose not to buy Obamacare coverage because they believe they don’t need it or want it.
Free Market Care – John Stossel
Imagine if you had “grocery insurance.” You’d buy expensive foods; supermarkets would never have sales. Everyone would spend more.
Insurance coverage — third-party payment — is revered by the media and socialists (redundant?) but is a terrible way to pay for things.
Today, 7 in 8 health care dollars are paid by Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance companies. Because there’s no real health care market, costs rose 467 percent over the last three decades.
By contrast, prices fell in the few medical areas not covered by insurance, like plastic surgery and LASIK eye care. Patients shop around, forcing health providers to compete.
The National Center for Policy Analysis found that from 1999 to 2011 the price of traditional LASIK eye surgery dropped from over $2,100 to about $1,700.
Source: Free Market Care – John Stossel
