TOO SOON TO WRITE OBITUARY FOR ACA
Obamacare does have problems but works well in many states
FactCheck.org have only one carrier option, said Louise Norris, who tracks insurance markets for healthinsurance.org, an independent health insurance guide for consumers. Oklahoma is one of five states with only one insurance company participating, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s report on insurer participation, and the average premium there for a benchmark plan increased 69% this year. And most of North Carolina is served only by Blue Cross Blue Shield, which says it has lost $405 million on ACA plans over a two-year period.
An example of a healthy market is New York, where 17 insurance carriers offer plans. The state just announced a 28% increase in total enrollments for this year.
And in Wisconsin, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Arkansas and California, there is still vigorous participation by insurance companies. Wisconsin alone had 14 insurance companies offering ACA policies.
NEW INSURERS STEP IN
As Aetna, Humana and others have pulled out of some states, some new companies have gotten in for 2017, among them Bright Health in Colorado, Cigna in North Carolina and Virginia, and Wellmark in Iowa.
USA TODAY reported that even Aetna, which has stopped writing ACA policies in 11 states, made nearly $12 million on individual ACA plans in Texas and more than $8 million in Pennsylvania before it pulled out of those states, according to filings with state regulators. And the newspaper also reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, after its big losses in 2014 and 2015, was taking in hundreds of millions more than it was paying out to beneficiaries in 2016.
What’s often lost in the GOP’s recitations of Obamacare’s problems is that the large majority of those covered by private ACA policies don’t feel the effect of rising premiums because they get subsidies.
Mark Twain wrote in 1897 that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” The same can be said of GOP claims that Obamacare is fatally ill. If Republicans want it dead, they’ll probably have to kill it themselves.