Political Party Weasels Goofy Old Party (Latin): Retunsus Vetus Pars

GOP Staying on Top of Things in a “Healthy Sort of Way”

Speaker of the Louse

Why are so many insurance companies jumping out of the market under ACA (Obamacare)?

Could it be the GOP’s scare tactics seen in this fine Atlantic article? Also, related from this CNBC analysis.

They want to ensure ACA failure w/o taking any responsibility for its failure – just blame?

GOP Popular Talking Points:

1.  Obamacare is “collapsing” under its own weight.

2.  One-third of counties are projected to have just one insurer (#1 popular talking point including Trump — as they try to gin up support for their replacement bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA).

3.  In a recent editorial, HHS Secretary (former GA Rep.) Tom Price portrays Obamacare as a house that’s on fire and “many of our fellow Americans are trapped inside.”

NOTE: Insurers are still deciding whether to participate in the Obamacare exchanges and complain about it being lackluster – that point is valid. 

Several examples:

1.  Aetna pulled out of Obamacare in VA – and now they are only in four states.

2.  Medica, is the last insurer remaining in most of IA and they threatened to stop selling individual plans all together.

3.  Humana pulled out of TN back in February. That left 40,000 people with no insurance option.

4.  Blue-Cross Blue-Shield reluctantly stepped in to fill that gap but only if certain conditions were met.

5. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, 31 percent of counties will have just one insurer this year.

Republicans usually fail to say insurers might have been less likely to have exited if more states had expanded Medicaid. ACA allowed to expand Medicaid for the poor – earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level; $16,400 for single adults. Then, in 2012, the USSC said the expansion was optional. To date, only 19 states have rejected the Medicaid expansion.

Conversely, people earning below 100% of the poverty level, e.g., $12,000 annually in those 19 states are not eligible for ACA subsidies, thus they are in an insurance no-man’s land a “so-called the coverage gap.”

People earning between 100% and 138% of poverty in those Medicaid-rejection states, do qualify for subsidies to buy insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.

Many in that group did enroll in Obamacare and make up about 40% of the Medicaid population in those non-expansion states compared to 6% in the expansion states.

A big catch is that poor people tend to be sicker than rich people, thus with so many poor, sick people in the Obamacare marketplaces might have made it more expensive for insurers to operate in the non-expansion states.

In Alabama for instance, Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only insurer participating in the exchange in 2017, and it’s spending $1.20 for every $1 it collects in premiums — an unsustainable ratio as analysts cite.

What happened in states where Medicaid was expanded:

In Iowa, expanded Medicaid has had so many insurers pull out of its exchange that there might be no Obamacare plans on offer this year.

(Thus in Iowa, and other Medicaid-expansion states, a different Obamacare-related choice might have contributed to the high cost of insuring their Obamacare enrollees).

Worth noting: Before Obamacare, insurers could reject customers they thought would be too sick and too expensive.  After Obamacare, 35 states continued to allow the sale of non-Obamacare-compliant plans.

NOTE: States that didn’t allow this tended to be more liberal NY, VT, etc. People in those plans were healthier than average (they had to pass healthiness tests that insurers allowed to use to screen their customers). Those plans also raise rates as people get sick, that is not allowed under Obamacare. 

Healthy people in those states were kept out of the Obamacare marketplace thus joining Obamacare only if and when they get sick. Those plans might have made the Obamacare pool sicker in those states. GOP ever mentions these things – why is that – silly question, um?

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