As yesterday was the first day of Obamacare re-enrollment, the NY Times has created a nice visual that clearly illustrates how successful the program has been:
As the maps clearly show, there is one particular area of our country where the number of insured has not fallen dramatically and, not unsurprisingly, they correspond to the states that refused Medicaid expansion. Obamacare has resulted a 7% decline in the numbered of uninsured adults. This has probably saved thousands of families from bankruptcy and millions of dollars for the
country in reduced emergency health care costs.
Yes, there are still problems with Obamacare as rising premiums and reduced choices in insurers are showing. But the fact is that most people will be protected from these rising rates with increased subsidies. For those, like myself, who are not, it may require dropping down to a lower priced bronze plan in order to avoid the increase. But, speaking for myself, I am still better off in the lowest-priced bronze plan than I would have been before Obamacare. As Jared Bernstein point out, these current problems are viewed as a failure of Obamacare. In fact, they are more likely either a failure of the market or a pricing calibration problem. The architects of Obamacare recognized that insurers “had an incentive, for example, to set their initial prices too low to get customers, which would mean actuarial losses and a big jump in premiums”, which is exactly what we are seeing now. There were two proposals to mitigate these potential effects — a public option and the adoption of risk corridors. The public option never survived and the GOP has been relentlessly attacking these risk corridors. Bernstein says, “this is less a failure in the structure of the program than growing pains as insurers learn to price their products based on the health of those coming into the exchanges. If there’s a structural flaw in Obamacare, it’s that it doesn’t include the public option.” I couldn’t agree more.
Yesterday, Donald Trump vowed, if he is elected, that he would call a special session of Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare. Of course, that really means just repeal Obamacare as there is no Republican plan to replace it at all. Just look at the map and all those people who would lose health insurance. Do I really need to comment further?