Congress can find a bipartisan solution to health care

Even though congressional passage of Ryancare has failed, Obamacare still has a well-documented problem in the individual insurance marketplaces that needs to be fixed.

As stated in the March 25 Post-Gazette (“Republicans, Democrats Argue What Comes Next After Replacement Plan Fails”), the Affordable Care Act “marketplaces are currently a conduit to health coverage for 10 million Americans, but they have been financially fragile, prompting spiking rates and defections of major insurers.” Further, the March 26 story “Now What? Options for Consumers as Health Law Drama Fades” stated, “About a third of the nation’s 3,100 counties are down to just one insurer.” That is one-third of U.S. geography, mostly rural, one-third of the U.S. population.

This marketplace problem affects only about 3 percent of Americans. As Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich recently said, the ACA has problems, but “let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.”

There is a simple legislative fix, which Democrats will support, to the ACA individual marketplaces that have high insurance rates due to only one insurer: Allow individuals in these one-insurance-offering counties to purchase Medicare, based on actuarial calculations. Many of these one-insurance-company marketplaces have too small a population pool for an insurer to offer lower rates. By adding these individuals to the vast Medicare population, their health insurance rates would drop dramatically. Clearly, the Republican chant is “lower health insurance premiums.” I expect the private health insurers would not object to the government taking over these difficult health insurance populations that are creating bad publicity for the insurers.

There is a solution to every problem; however, you might not like it. We send our representatives to Washington to solve tough problems. Our Congress needs to take this idea to fix the health insurance marketplaces and turn it into bipartisan law. PETER FLOYD

Sewickley