Obama says Affordable Care Act works but has affordability ‘growing pains’
President Barack Obama said Thursday that the Affordable Care Act is working, but he acknowledged that “growing pains” are causing some Americans to be hurt by escalating insurance prices in marketplaces created under the law.
Kicking off a push by the administration to encourage more people to sign up — with a particular emphasis on young adults — the president said rising premiums and diminished competition in ACA insurance exchanges in some states are especially problematic for people who do not qualify for federal subsidies that the law provides. He proposed that his successor in the White House and the next Congress provide larger tax credits to encourage young adults to buy coverage through the marketplaces and raise the income thresholds to make the subsidies available to more middle-class families.
Mr. Obama portrayed the 2010 law revising the health care system as a “starter home,” saying, “You hope over time you can make improvements.” He sought to tamp down public concern that some major insurance companies are abandoning the marketplaces that are a core part of the law and that remaining insurers are raising their rates. The higher prices do not affect most Americans who still get coverage through a job, the president said, and most of the approximately 10 million people with marketplace health plans are buffered by their subsidies.
Nevertheless, he said, “If you are one of the people who … doesn’t qualify for a tax credit, these premium increases do make insurance less affordable.” He cast the idea of expanding subsidies as a way to “smooth out the kinks” in the law at a time when the ACA already has helped to drive down the ranks of the uninsured to about 10 percent of the U.S. population.
His 45-minute speech in Miami was a recitation of the law’s accomplishments, a repudiation of persistent Republican efforts to tear it down and a road map for refining the law attached to his name — Obamacare — after his tenure in the White House. Coming less than two weeks before the fourth enrollment season begins on Nov. 1 in ACA marketplaces, his remarks also were an attempt to frame the law’s benefits.