Uninsured rate hit record low of 8%, HHS analysis shows

[Paradoxical]

The Affordable Care Act, supercharged by the American Rescue Plan (a practice hopefully extended under the pending Inflation Reduction Act), continues to nudge the nation toward universal coverage. Good timing as Congress prepares to extend the enhanced premium support for shoppers in the marketplaces.

Uninsured rate hit record low of 8%, HHS analysis shows

If someone has no house, very few assets why would he pay for insurance when he would get it for free?

 

[mrjurrs]

So, ACA is just a tax scheme from the federal government to make sure everyone is paying for health insurance and if they can't, then the government "subsidize" the ones that can't pay for it. But, the money doesn't go directly to the consumer, it goes directly to the insurer. And, they still will have their high-deductible that will make sure the patient will be in the red if they ever need medical care.

Honestly, if you need universal healthcare, we do in this nation, then just pass it. No gimmicks no get rich schemes for insurers.

The ACA was a plan to provide coverage opportunities for more people. It was a step in the right direction, not a solution.

 

[mrjurrs]

Under the last two Dem administrations, yes. In the brief interlude in which the GOP held the presidency, the coverage numbers started going the wrong way. Biden and the Dem Congress are just righting the ship and making the ACA into what it should've been all along.

Another example of D's paying the price to clean up after R administrations. And then the R's run against the D's spending the money required to pay for the cleanup.

 

[Greenbeard]

Problem is that such is the power of various lobbies that democrats controlling everything could not get a public option into Obamacare. We still have a core of conservatives in the US who explicitly stated that they did not want the public to have another example added SS and Medicare to make them think the government could do some good. Others on the right showed they accepted the inevitable and proposed repeal and *replace.*

"Repeal and replace" was always an empty slogan, not a proposal. It's been twelve years and the GOP still has not idea what it wants to do.

Erm, I am not interested in a political think tank's back asswards assessment nearly as much as the line item budgetary impact.

"Now, the CBO says that the gross cost of Obamacare's insurance coverage provisions over the 9-year span from 2014 through 2022 would be $1.674 trillion."

Weekly Standard: Obamacare To Cost 1.93 Trillion

The Congressional Budget Office may have lowered its estimated cost for the Affordable Care Act, but The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey H. Anderson says it's still far too much.

www.npr.org

That's from NPR.

I believe after adjusting for cost savings and tax revenue that number falls to ~1.3T.

However, the idea that it reduces the deficit is comical.

Luckily it's now 2022 and we can evaluate that claim. Actual increased spending over that 11-year period relative to the baseline they used? $200B on Medicaid/CHIP and $467B in exchange spending. Throw in that $40 billion for small employer tax credits and you're at about $700B. Meanwhile actual Medicare spending over that period came in nearly $300B below the CBO's summer 2012 expectations.

Another example of D's paying the price to clean up after R administrations. And then the R's run against the D's spending the money required to pay for the cleanup.

The GOP's days of running against the ACA are over. The gimmick was only cute as long as they could feign interest in coming up with an alternative, but as it turns out that con is only good for so many election cycles.

 

[Greenbeard]

If someone has no house, very few assets why would he pay for insurance when he would get it for free?

Who's asking him to?

 

[NOVA66]

The Affordable Care Act, supercharged by the American Rescue Plan (a practice hopefully extended under the pending Inflation Reduction Act), continues to nudge the nation toward universal coverage. Good timing as Congress prepares to extend the enhanced premium support for shoppers in the marketplaces.

Uninsured rate hit record low of 8%, HHS analysis shows

may be cheaper and better to expand Medicaid and premiums will be determined by your income. Medicaid could pay providers more and get have better coverage because overhead costs would be much lower. With Insurances companies you have very high administration costs including multi million dollar salaries for the CEO and Executives.

 

[Paradoxical]

Who's asking him to?

Therein lies the problem. He KNOWS he would get it for free, so why get a job like a responsible citizen?

The premise is like the Soros's idea that criminals are that way because they are poor and that people really would work if the employers paid them a living wage even though that person never paid the price of admission.

 

[Nickyjo]

Therein lies the problem. He KNOWS he would get it for free, so why get a job like a responsible citizen?

The premise is like the Soros's idea that criminals are that way because they are poor and that people really would work if the employers paid them a living wage even though that person never paid the price of admission.

I have no job, get insurance free through Medicare. Before that I couldn't buy insurance because of an incurable illness, so depended on another government program. And lots of people in around the world depend on government health insurance, just like I and they depend on government funded police and fire locally, on FEMA and the FDA nationally. You are swimming against a worldwide tide, as people have decided that the community, local, state, regional or national, should take responsibility for some functions. The debate is over how many of these, not whether. That paving streets is not an individual responsibility is obvious. After that it gets more complicated and controversial. The left may want too much done by government. The right, in the form of Ronald Reagan, said that Medicare would make us unfree. He got over that. Liberals pull us forward. Conservatives act as brakes so we don't careen off the road. Seems to work out.

 

[TomFitz]

Great and all, now you need to find a doctor willing to accept your health insurance plan and that high-deductible will prevent you from getting care. If this is the future of universal healthcare in America, it will be crap like a lot of other things America excels at doing wrong.

Sorry, but high deductible insurance predates the ACA

 

[Paradoxical]

Sorry, but high deductible insurance predates the ACA

Not like they are today. Not even close,

 

[TomFitz]

Not like they are today. Not even close,

Not even close to being true!

 

[Greenbeard]

Therein lies the problem. He KNOWS he would get it for free, so why get a job like a responsible citizen?

The assumption that health insurance is the only reason anyone ever works invites the question of why anyone has ever accepted a job that doesn’t provide health insurance. And why plenty of people who have free insurance work, for that matter.

 

[Nickyjo]

The assumption that health insurance is the only reason anyone ever works invites the question of why anyone has ever accepted a job that doesn’t provide health insurance. And why plenty of people who have free insurance work, for that matter.

As I understand history - corrections welcome - the US tradition of attaching health insurance to work came out of WWII
wage controls. Employers couldn’t raise wages to compete with workers, so the offered benefits like health insurance. I don’t believe that is the same in most other countries that provide health care.

 

[slavablueberryjam]

Sorry, but high deductible insurance predates the ACA

And what do you assume to be the average deductible on ACA for most plans under 600$ a month?

 

[Indydave]

Great and all, now you need to find a doctor willing to accept your health insurance plan and that high-deductible will prevent you from getting care. If this is the future of universal healthcare in America, it will be crap like a lot of other things America excels at doing wrong.

for sure......my company's health care deductible is 7000 for family plus 450 per month premium....it's worthless........I don't use it and glad I do not have to.......but I have been blessed with good health and my families also.......but the day will probably come......the AFC was pushed and enacted just to get the foot in the door for single payer national care.......insurance companies contribute nothing to health care.......

 

[Nickyjo]

for sure......my company's health care deductible is 7000 for family plus 450 per month premium....it's worthless........I don't use it and glad I do not have to.......but I have been blessed with good health and my families also.......but the day will probably come......the AFC was pushed and enacted just to get the foot in the door for single payer national care.......insurance companies contribute nothing to health care.......

Funny how much of the developed world has figured this out, with the US as an outlie. I repeat my point that we already have govt-sponsored health care covering tens of millions, just lot all of us. Wassup with that?

 

[slavablueberryjam]

for sure......my company's health care deductible is 7000 for family plus 450 per month premium....it's worthless........I don't use it and glad I do not have to.......but I have been blessed with good health and my families also.......but the day will probably come......the AFC was pushed and enacted just to get the foot in the door for single payer national care.......insurance companies contribute nothing to health care.......

For me, single, ACA, 452$ a month, deductible is 8400$.

 

[Indydave]

For me, single, ACA, 452$ a month, deductible is 8400$.

push for single payer.....each taxed a percentage (7%) on gross income and full coverage for all people for all circumstances........expensive?......hell yes but each contributes and each participates.....or some version thereof........what we have today is not only criminal but immoral......

 

[slavablueberryjam]

push for single payer.....each taxed a percentage (7%) on gross income and full coverage for all people for all circumstances........expensive?......hell yes but each contributes and each participates.....or some version thereof........what we have today is not only criminal but immoral......

Won't make a difference, no one is united and representatives are bought off to look the other way. They don't care about doing that because it isn't them and their families that are suffering or missing out. You can't expect empathy from those without the ability to feel it.

 

[TomFitz]

For me, single, ACA, 452$ a month, deductible is 8400$.

Which reflects a long standing and growing trend in the health insurance industry in the US>

Since the US health care industry has no incentive whatsoever to manage cost, all the players “manage” their costs by raising the markup. They have also larded the “system” with layers of middlemen and consultants, specialists and people who often do very little but bill big for it. No one cares.

There is every incentive to do more of this, and virtually no incentive not to.

The insurance industry is the bank for the industry, and it adjusts its pricing (adding its considerable markup). Everybody gets rich, and the employers and employees pay.

It‘s a system that has richly rewarded its major componants, insurance companies, pharma companies, hospital chains, ets. All of who have the money to buy the lobbyists to work to insure that the golden goose continues to lay eggs.

This cycle has insured health care costs rose at rates considerably higher than the rate of inflation for four decades.

Employers compensated for the huge increases by cutting coverage, thus deductibles were born, and rose steadily to their present heights.

Conservaitves like to gripe about the high deductible rates of Bronze and Silver plans. And yet similar huge deductibles had already appeared, especially in smaller and medium sized businesses. Where the trend to high deductibles had been going on for years.

The cost plus institutional corruption and the strong disincentives for cost management in teh American health care industry are the main reason why the US is spending over 20% of its GDP on health care, far more than any other developed country. And why Americans pay twice as much per capita as people in ANY country with single payer national health insurance.

 

[Nickyjo]

Which reflects a long standing and growing trend in the health insurance industry in the US>

Since the US health care industry has no incentive whatsoever to manage cost, all the players “manage” their costs by raising the markup. They have also larded the “system” with layers of middlemen and consultants, specialists and people who often do very little but bill big for it. No one cares.

There is every incentive to do more of this, and virtually no incentive not to.

The insurance industry is the bank for the industry, and it adjusts its pricing (adding its considerable markup). Everybody gets rich, and the employers and employees pay.

It‘s a system that has richly rewarded its major componants, insurance companies, pharma companies, hospital chains, ets. All of who have the money to buy the lobbyists to work to insure that the golden goose continues to lay eggs.

This cycle has insured health care costs rose at rates considerably higher than the rate of inflation for four decades.

Employers compensated for the huge increases by cutting coverage, thus deductibles were born, and rose steadily to their present heights.

Conservaitves like to gripe about the high deductible rates of Bronze and Silver plans. And yet similar huge deductibles had already appeared, especially in smaller and medium sized businesses. Where the trend to high deductibles had been going on for years.

The cost plus institutional corruption and the strong disincentives for cost management in teh American health care industry are the main reason why the US is spending over 20% of its GDP on health care, far more than any other developed country. And why Americans pay twice as much per capita as people in ANY country with single payer national health insurance.

Is there a current conservative or GOP opinion or plan on health care?

 

[Greenbeard]

Conservatives like to gripe about the high deductible rates of Bronze and Silver plans. And yet similar huge deductibles had already appeared, especially in smaller and medium sized businesses. Where the trend to high deductibles had been going on for years.

Given that griping, odd that one of the few specific ideas the GOP has advanced on health care (during their failed Trump-era repeal efforts) has been to push for higher deductible plans than exist today.

GOP Deductibles Too High to Legally Exist

Good lord. The clown show continues. But first some background. Under the ACA, plans sold in the marketplaces are grouped into metal tiers based on their generosity, or actuarial value--the portion of the costs for a consistent set of covered benefits (the essential health benefits) that the...

debatepolitics.com

 

[Vern]

Erm, I am not interested in a political think tank's back asswards assessment nearly as much as the line item budgetary impact.

"Now, the CBO says that the gross cost of Obamacare's insurance coverage provisions over the 9-year span from 2014 through 2022 would be $1.674 trillion."

Weekly Standard: Obamacare To Cost 1.93 Trillion

The Congressional Budget Office may have lowered its estimated cost for the Affordable Care Act, but The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey H. Anderson says it's still far too much.

www.npr.org

That's from NPR.

I believe after adjusting for cost savings and tax revenue that number falls to ~1.3T.

However, the idea that it reduces the deficit is comical.

At first I thought you were just having a problem with english but now I know you're not here to have an honest discussion. You dont get to wave away my editorial discussing the CBO assessment of Obamacare with a link to that assessment as a "political think tank's assessment" then post a 10 year conservative think tank's dishonest editorial. That's an integrity problem not a language problem. No where in your conservative "editorial" does it say it adds to the deficit. the word "deficit" doesn't even show up in the "editorial". And it cant because its a documented fact that Obamacare lowered the deficit. Yet you posted the "editorial" as proof it did add to the deficit. My only concern was did the republican sabotage of Obamacare cause it add to the deficit.