As Vox and The Hill among others have reported, Republicans are trying to reduce premiums by eliminating the ACA's list of 10 mandated benefits insurers must provide. These provisions regarding prescription drug coverage, hospitalization, out-patient treatment, mental health care, pregnancy and maternity care and much more not only set a baseline for insurance offerings under Obamacare, but also help spread the risk for insurers across a much larger pool of policyholders. And that, CBO warned Obamacare repealers in December, is a big problem as far as the agency is concerned...PERRspectives
I think democrats have an unrealistic vision of how medicare buy-in would work in practice. They're confident the buy-in program would fund itself, that the insurance plan would be generous, and the premiums low. None of these things are true....Interesting analysis and proposal.
The bill makes significant changes to the ACA, including replacing the individual mandate penalty with a new penalty for failing to maintain continuous coverage. Both approaches are designed to insure that sick and healthy—as well as old and young—Americans pay into the insurance pool, which promotes affordability.
Under the ACA, the individual mandate imposes penalties on people who are uninsured for more than three months during the course of the year. Those penalties are adjusted based on income and are prorated based on the length of time an individual was uninsured.
As proposed in the AHCA, the continuous coverage requirement would apply a premium penalty for individuals who have a gap in continuous coverage of 63 days or greater over 12 months. The penalty is equal to 30 percent of the monthly premium and would last for 12 months, starting in calendar year 2018.
Because premiums are age adjusted, the penalty would be higher for older people and lower for younger individuals. Additionally, because the AHCA’s penalty is not tied to income, low-income individuals will pay significantly more under the AHCA’s penalty, compared to what they pay for not having insurance under the ACA....
There are more details, but the basic outlines of the plan are simple: Cut taxes on the rich, cut spending on the poor, and expose more families to rising health care costs. The thing is, we’re talking about health care here. People will need the same amount of health care no matter what Congress does. If the government pays less for health care, poor people will have to pay more. If they can afford it, Trumpcare is effectively the same as a tax on the poor. If they can’t afford it, it’s even worse. This is as naked an example of class warfare as you’ll see today.Baseline Scenario
A new poll by McLaughlin & Associates, commissioned by Hudson Institute, sheds some light on this matter. It finds that, when the link is made between Obamacare’s preexisting-conditions protections and higher premiums, Americans prefer lower premiums to such protections....Hudson Institute
This deep dive into our polling data shows that people are demanding the impossible: cheap, comprehensive health insurance that they can purchase only when they need it. Unable to accomplish universal health insurance, Democrats took the unpopular step of mandating health insurance because they recognized it was necessary for the marketplaces to function. To date, Republicans have avoided making explicit how they will negotiate the popular and unpopular provisions of Obamacare, preferring to promise, in Trump’s words, “something terrific”. Now that they have full control of the Presidency and Congress, Republicans have tough choices to make. The majority of Americans might support Trump’s healthcare plan now; do not be surprised if that changes quickly when they find out how much they actually like Obamacare!Predictwise
Official data show up to 44 percent of families pushed into poverty were impoverished by illness.The good news is that modern health care is capable of providing treatment for many conditions that were not treatable previously. The bad news that a lot of it is very costly and only the wealthy can afford the best treatment when care is rationed by price.
The preponderance of evidence from the literature is that “entrepreneurship lock” exists, though there are varying estimates of its extent.The Incidental Economist
The leader of a top conservative advocacy organization believes that people who are born with congenital illnesses should pay more for health care coverage and rely on family and friends if they can’t afford their medical bills.
Appearing on SiriusXM’s Stand Up with Pete Dominick on Thursday, Dean Clancy — VP of Public Policy at FreedomWorks — insisted that insurers should charge sicker people higher rates so that younger and healthier beneficiaries don’t have to subsidize their coverage.ThinkProgress
Health insurance companies are looking to put off complying with health care reform rules that guarantee basic benefits and consumer protections -- and they've figured out how to do so for up to one more year.
The Los Angeles Times reports that big health insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint may attempt to skirt new regulations that take effect on Jan. 1, 2014 by renewing some of their customers in the meantime and letting them keep the coverage they currently have for as long as a year after the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is supposed to kick in.
The health care law requires insurance plans sold to individuals who don't get benefits through their employers to cover a minimum set of benefits, prohibits companies from refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions or to charge them higher rates than healthy people, doesn't allow health insurers to levy higher premiums on women than men, limits how much more older people can be made to pay, and guarantees customers can re-up their plans each year.
But those rules don't take effect until January -- or whenever a customer's current health insurance plan expires next year, which could be later. According to the Los Angeles Times, some insurers are weighing a lawful scheme in which they would renew customers' plans before 2014, thus preventing them from having to meet Obamacare standards until as late as Jan. 1, 2015.The Huffington Post
When Congressman Paul Ryan first rolled out his plan three years ago to replace Medicare with a voucher system, he acknowledged the inescapable conclusion that his massive cost-shifting to seniors constituted rationing. "Rationing happens today!" Ryan protested, "The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?" But then as now, he omits the real culprit: private insurers who can deny coverage, jack up premiums and cherry-pick healthier customers. Three years , three budget plans and two name changes later, Paul Ryan's Medicare privatization scheme will still lead to de facto rationing of health care for tens of millions of future elderly Americans.Peerspectives
"The problem, as on almost all issues relating to government's role, is centered on whites, particularly those in the working class....Just 18 percent believe the law will leave their family better off, compared to 38 percent who believe they will be worse off as a result.
"....Gallup Polling in March 2010 found that while few whites expected to personally benefit from the law, a majority of them believed it would benefit low-income families and those without health insurance. That suggested they viewed health care reform primarily as a welfare program that would help the needy but not their own families."Read it at Mother Jones
