Study: Obamacare Is Not Collapsing

Really. I have BCBS through NC and deductibles more than doubled under Obamacare compliant policies along with increases in out of pocket. And premiums jumped about 20% initially and have gone up not down from there. Going to a gold plan would have increased my premium cost by mkre than 50%

 

So you only invest your retirement funds in companies that "just" barely stay in business and you make sure you don't invest in companies that make record profits?

 

Well here in GA ours did the usual yearly increase, but nothing drastic.

 

They didn't have to buy until the democrats decided to force everyone.

Obamacare is working as designed. It was designed to fail but the Dems at the time assumed they would be in power when it did. Then they would ride in and take the next step toward government controlled heath care.

 

Through a company, although mine has changed since the ACA. The preparation for the "Cadillac tax" has lead to the choices being offered having higher and higher deductibles in order to avoid the 40% penalty when the tax rolls out in 3 years.

I suspect your plan will change then.

 

Thats because Obamacare doesn't make healthcare decisions...the Insurance companies do, as they always have.

 

No, it was designed to succeed, and as the KFF pointed out in their recent report it WAS working.

But don't worry, Rubio and Boehner made sure it would fail. And their fix is.....oh yeah...NOTHING.......So make sure when your premiums raise in the future you blame them ok......

 

Not sure if it will or not. We live in the richest country in the world, every American should have access to affordable, quality healthcare.

 

It was designed to have problems so government could swoop in and fix the problems it created with more government.

Unlike partisans I have no problem spreading the blame around. I blame republicans for the mess we're in almost as much as democrats. Instead of voting to repeal it 60x they could have done something useful like come up with something else.

 

exactly, and republicans want them to be able to make more decisions for you

 

No it wasn't. All due respect but the right broke it on purpose and then blamed it on big government. They took away the funding for risk corridors, which caused rates increase in the exchanges, and then screamed that "Obamacare is driving up prices".

Breaking things and blaming it on "big government" has always been a tactic of the right. They purposely break things and then claim "see, big government doesn't work". And the way the broke Obamacare is a perfect example of that, as well as Medicare Part D when they stripped the governments ability to negotiate prices. And the beauty of their plan is that their base believes it and then propagates that very message, as you just did.

 

Obamacare has been a **** show since the word go, by design. Now you can blame only republicans for all its problems if you want but that doesn't make it so.

I think it's retarded the government doesn't negotiate pricing. But then don't let that stop you from your partisan rabbit trail.

 

To be clear, I do not blame republicans only. Obamacare was full of gifts to dem donors, and the dems are no better than the republicans as they are just two sides of the same coin. There were dems that wanted single payer, but there was no way they could get that passed. But Obamacare was designed with the Risk Corridors in place in the short term to keep the system solvent. Once that money was defunded it broke the system. And YES, I blame the republicans for that as they did it, but I blame them more for the way they did it, and the fact that after they did it they blamed everything but what they did. They need to at least be honest about what they did and own it, instead of blaming it on Obamacare. Thats whats best for the party, not the country.

But that being said, I do believe that Obamacare was what they could get passed at the time. Single payer is a much better option, but the dems were as beholden to the insurance industry as the repubs were, so that was a non starter. I don't blame that solely on the republicans.

Washington is a dysfunctional cesspool of special interests, that have bought and paid for the government. I just think that blaming puppets in government for the problems without looking at those who are pulling the strings is disingenuous to the debate

 

The entire basis of this, is the ridiculous CBO estimate that, despite years of fruitless efforts, somehow, magically, in the next two years, 11 million more people will sign up for Obamacare, taking the (outdated) total to 22 million. What in the world could ever lead someone to think that?

So, they are using as "current" (we have newer) figures, the March 2016 numbers, that show 11 million signed up, which is now merely 9 million. But, they look at this data, that shows a clear decline in people signing up, and determine that magically the trend will reverse, and the numbers will suddenly double. Why would anyone objective think that?

 

Well instead they have Obamacare!

 

"Risk Corridors" were simply subsidies to insurance companies to make sure companies made a profit if the exchanges went underwater. It's telling that corporate subsidies are a Democratic talking point now.

 

It is exactly what would be expected from typical progressive policies.

As the market shuts down in many states, and raises premiums to cover subsidizing, it starts to get profitable. Up until the point that the healthy people, who are being made to pay for the subsidized peoples, can no longer bear the cost of the ever increasing premiums.

You are claiming that bailing water out of a sinking ship is working, while ignoring the massive bursting seam in the hull that is about to let far more water in.

From the article:

Underlying Trends
Driving recent improvements in individual market insurer financial performance are the premium increases in 2017 and simultaneous slow growth in claims for medical expenses. On average, premiums per enrollee grew 20% from first quarter 2016 to first quarter 2017, while per person claims grew only 5%.


Figure 3: Average First Quarter Individual Market Monthly Premiums and Claims Per Person, 2011 – 2017

One concern about rising premiums in the individual market was whether healthy enrollees would drop out of the market in large numbers rather than pay higher rates. While the vast majority of exchange enrollees are subsidized and sheltered from paying premium increases, those enrolling off-exchange would have to pay the full increase. As average claims costs grew very slowly in the first quarter of 2017, it does not appear that the enrollees today are noticeably sicker than it was last year.

On average, the number of days individual market enrollees spent in a hospital in first quarter of 2017 was similar to first quarter inpatient days in the previous two years. (The first quarter of 2014 is not necessarily representative of the full year because open enrollment was longer that year and a number of exchange enrollees did not begin their coverage until mid-year 2014).


Figure 4: Average First Quarter Individual Market Monthly Hospital Patient Days Per 1,000 Enrollees, 2011 – 2017

Taken together, these data on claims and utilization suggest that the individual market risk pool is relatively stable, though sicker on average than the pre-ACA market, which is to be expected since people with pre-existing conditions have guaranteed access to coverage under the ACA.​

Let see what happens after the premiums increases are realized by the non-subsidized participants.

 

No they weren't.

They were a subsidy if they lost money, BUT, if they made a profit that profit was paid back into the corridors. It was designed to be a zero sum game in the long run. Which is why ending it early killed Obamacare

 

Bill Mahr called Obamacare " a blow job for the health insurance companies"....I dare say he was right to a large degree. The hue and cry is about the FACT that under Obamacare they can only screw their customers 95%...so like petulant children they are (in some cases) taking their toys and going home until they can get their way.

Obama inherited a country on the verge of a full blown depression....and had managed to pull it back from the brink DESPITE full blown opposition from the Party of No. So now the Murdoch media and cohorts are on the bull horn as to how Obamacare is a disaster across the board. But as the OP shows, that is NOT the case. And the band played on.

 

Let's see what happens when the insurance companies and their neo conservative/tea party flunkies stop acting as if there is no WILLFUL ACTIONS TO DISRUPT AND DESTABLIZE ANY POSITIVE RESULTS FROM OBAMACARE (as the article mentions).

 

Trumpcare is a joke; Republicans are incapable of building anything. They function on fear and loathing and intolerance of others.

 

From that sentence I can clearly see that you do not understand insurance even a little bit. That is EXACTLY how insurance works. That is how ALL insurance works. Everyone pays for everyone else, healthy or sick. Insurance spreads the risk and the costs to ALL, thats how they keep costs affordable.

Insurance is a socialist endeavor. Obamacare did not change that, and even if they right repeals it it will still operate this way !!!!

Exactly as the experts who crafted Obamacare expected. By including preventative care in the plans, the expectation was that claims would decrease over time(or they increase at much slower rates). Which is exactly what happened. As the number so claims decreased, overall rates would decrease.

So as more people pay, the hospitals are not charging those who do pay, for those who didn't pay (the uninsured). So again, as predicted, now that everyone is paying, costs were growing at much slower rates than previously. So the Repubs had to do something to stop that, or they would suffer a huge political loss if Obamacare succeeded

So as predicited, after a couple of years the market actually started to stabilize, AS EXPECTED.

They were growing at slower rates than previously. KFF's annual report said that

 

The brain trust of the democrat party has news for all yall....

 

You know that the dems healthcare bill was available for almost 4 weeks prior to the vote ?

You also know that the right is actually not letting anyone know whats in it and ramming it thru.....are you OK with that ?