The new Republican strategy is what they are deceptively calling “Skinny Repeal”
It’s deceptive because it’s not actually repealing Obamacare. it’s just repealing the individual mandate, along with the employer mandate that only applies to companies with more than 50 employees.
If they repeal only the mandate, it will destroy insurance markets and raise premiums through the roof.
Here’s why:
- If young, healthy people can get insurance at any time at the same price, they won’t buy it until they are sick or get in accident and need it.
- That means the people who use less coverage exit the insurance pool.
- This raises the cost per patient of those remaining in the insurance pool.
- If the cost per patient goes up, your premium goes up.
This isn’t complicated. Sknny Repeal means big, fat premium increases.
Here's what Vox wrote in the linked article:
Second, repealing the individual mandate risks sending Obamacare’s insurance markets into a death spiral. Health insurers have long said that a compulsion for people to buy insurance is necessary in order for the law to work, after it required that insurers cover everyone and charge everyone the same premiums no matter their health.
Without such a mandate, healthy people could forgo coverage while sick people would continue to buy insurance, driving up costs for insurers, who in turn increase premiums, sending the market into a death spiral. The Congressional Budget Office estimated repealing the mandate by itself would lead to 15 million fewer Americans having health insurance 10 years from now.
In fact, during the 2008 primaries, Obama’s health care plan didn’t include a mandate because it’s politically unpopular. It was the one policy Hillary’s team attacked him for during the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary, but once Obama became President, he realized he had to adopt the mandate or people’s premiums would be through the roof.
And the Republicans are trying to jam it through before estimates can be crafted of how much more their constituents will pay for this monstrosity of an idea.
Bottom line is that skinny repeal = fat premium increases. This can not pass.