Reduced enrollment period, weekend outage windows, reduced assistance budget, reduced advertisement / reminders about enrollment … it’s almost as if they want ACA exchange usage to go down, especially among younger, healthier people, further driving up the price of insurance … which they can then blame on the ACA.
If you can’t fix it, break it!
4 Things The Trump Administration Has Done To Ensure Obamacare Enrollment Is More Difficult This Year
Tom Price failed to get the Affordable Care Act repealed and replaced during his brief tenure as Health and Human Services Secretary, but the surgeon-turned-congressman did manage to do some real d…
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Trump's biggest mistake was messing with the ACA because he should have let it implode on its own next year and have people begging for something different. You know, that's why all the major health care companies have pulled out of the exchange because it's so wonderful.
+JOHNNY D Companies have pulled out of the exchanges (by their own admission) largely because the GOP has let things fail, by not allowing the normal tweaking and updating process that every major legislation promises, by raising continued uncertainty for insurance companies as to how they will get payments from the federal government. The GOP has for the last seven years, and more so this year (see above), poured sugar into the gas tank of the ACA, all so that they can claim it's broken.
+Dave Hill , really? I don't see Gruber saying anything about Conservatives. You know, Gruber, the architect of the ACA?
10/26/16
One of the architects of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act appeared on CNN on Wednesday and claimed the system is “working as designed” — it just needs to punish people more with higher taxes.
One of the architects of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act appeared on CNN on Wednesday and claimed the system is “working as designed” — it just needs to punish people more with higher taxes.
MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber infamously told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania in November 2014 that Democrats required “the stupidity of the American voter” for Obamacare to become law.
The White House’s announcement that premium increases up to 25 percent await Americans in 2017 brought Mr. Gruber into the limelight once again this week, where he told CNN’s Carol Costello there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the program.
“There’s no sense in which it needs to be fixed,” Mr. Gruber said. “The law is working as designed. However, it could work better.”
How can it work better? He answers “I think probably the most important thing experts would agree on is that we need a larger mandate penalty. We have individuals who are essentially free-riding on the system. They’re essentially waiting until they get sick and then getting health insurance.”
In other words, raise the fines — “taxes,” the Supreme Court called them in upholding the constitutionality of the individual mandate — for not having an Obamacare-compliant health-insurance plan.
“The whole idea of this plan, the way it was pioneered in Massachusetts, was that the individual mandate penalty would bring those people into the system and have them participate. The penalty right now is probably too low and that’s something I think ideally we would fix,” the professor continued.
The conservative website Hot Air immediately took issue with Mr. Gruber’s analysis, along with his assertion that only the “very small fraction of people” buying insurance without subsidies will see prices skyrocket.
“Gruber is once again trying to intentionally mislead the public,” wrote Hot Air’s John Sexton on Wednesday. “It’s true that 85 percent of people buying insurance ‘on the exchanges’ are getting subsidies.
“However, as Gruber surely knows,” Mr. Sexton continues, “as many as half the people buying Obamacare plans are not buying them on the exchanges. And none of those people buying off-exchange plans are getting any subsides at all. So the idea that the 22 percent increases only apply a ‘small fraction’ is another attempt to deceive people about what is going on. Gruber knows the truth, he just doesn’t want viewers to know it.”
The Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday that Obamacare’s benchmark plan will jump to $302 from $242 in 2016.
Five states will also provide coverage from a single insurance company in 2017.
washingtontimes.com – Jonathan Gruber, infamous Obamacare architect, says system ‘working as designed’
+JOHNNY D
1. Washington Times (and Hot Air).
2. This is why academics should not be put in front of cameras, because their egos go on display. And Gruber has his own axe to grind on the ACA and how it was put together.
4. That said, he is fundamentally correct that the individual mandate, as passed in the ACA as a compromise number, is too low to prevent the "free rider" issue that jacks up premiums by weakening the risk pool.
I'll toss out a few alternatives articles:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/opinion/republicans-obamacare-aca.html
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/republicans-obamacare-trump-csr-medicaid/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/opinion/republicans-obamacare-aca.html?_r=0
+Dave Hill NYT and Mother Jones? Why not the Washington Post, too?
You stated earlier it was the GOP who ultimately caused major healthcare providers to pull from the ACA which isn't true. Gruber has an axe to grind with how the ACA was put together? Gruber is the architect of the ACA and 10/26/16 said it was working as intended only the "fine" for the mandate should be larger. The ACA was a failure before it started and success predicated on young people signing up. But, why would they when they're healthy and allowed to stay on their parents plan until 26? The ACA is nothing more than overpriced catastrophic insurance with less coverage than most had prior and less available network doctors thrown in for fun. There's basically four bands of coverage with gaps in between and if your current policy fell within those gaps you were cancelled because it didn't meet the requirements. The top band only covered up to around 94-95%. So, even if you had awesome insurance that covered 100% you were cancelled. If you switched jobs – cancelled. This would happen even if the insurance company switched your policy and you fell out of the bands of coverage- cancelled. This is by design trying to lead to single payer. Seriously, 30-150% increase in premiums for some and some with a $6500 annual deductible?? Just because many had insurance doesn't mean they could afford to use it because of the deductible. Like you stated earlier about "tweaking" the ACA. Well, Trumps plan was just the first step to get the ball rolling for something vastly better.
+JOHNNY D you don't need to take anyone else's word other than the health insurers themselves that Trump's administration is to blame for the uncertainty and rate hikes. Many outlets reported about this, you can find some examples here. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-obamacare-trump-mismanagement-20170518-story.html
+Bill Garrett is there someone out there that actually doesn't blame Trump for something?
Fake, but you get the idea.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/SsUkg8SLFsuWGsBDYREvA1kFiwr8qHPXLP9Z7Dt2rRK2XMcpBbA0BBkBz9g_4XU9vWRrSqu8boM
Real, so you get the point. Seven months apart. Oh, how sentiment changes …. It's Black and White…pun intended
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/lf8J4QcrjFOPRBEgKLgDnvh-WbxCs57Rh0NU3FzoYE_SxRJ-MvJGhnwofBMTTvqCcRN8Q5ssLr4
+JOHNNY D if Trump is legitimately to blame for something, then naturally people would blame him. That's natural and normal. Whether or not he's faced false accusations, he's faced provably true ones as well. So what's your point? 🙂
Trump's whole campaign was on repeal and replace Obamacare. So, yes there was uncertainty. But they knew it was coming. Like I said before Trump should have never done anything and let Obamacare implode on its own next year naturally. Then people would be begging for a change.
It sounds like you've agreed with me that Trump introduced uncertainty. And unless you can demonstrate that the health insurance industry as a whole is engaging in some kind of conspiracy to lose customers, I'm inclined to agree with them when they say that's what drove the rate hikes.
Are we on the same page so far? If not, what part of that do you disagree with now?
+JOHNNY D Because, of course, we need to take a "just the first step" in tossing out the current health insurance infrastructure. And I'm sure it will all be better from there on out.
(We'll leave aside that the real goal of the ACA Repeal Effort was to kneecap Medicaid.)
There is a difference between "Let's get rid of major bits and bobs" and "Let's tweak these compensation numbers."
You sort of ignore anything I said about Gruber and the mandate, except to repeat your initial points.
'NYT and Mother Jones? Why not the Washington Post, too?' Why not? Was there some action by the GOP identified in those articles that you disagree with or dispute?
+Dave Hill , never mind that Obamacare was the cause of the greatest Medicaid expansion in history. So, I don't know what you mean when you talk about the GOP wanting to kneecap Medicaid.
+JOHNNY D To not only shrink it back to the pre-ACA qualifications (because clearly people making 33% above the federal poverty level are living high on the hog and don't need any help with medical care), but change it into a block grant that not only doesn't meet changing economic or health care needs, but grows at slower than the medical inflation rate.