Imploding: Many on Obamacare exchanges will go from having a single insurer to “choose” from to none at all
04/03/2017 / By JD Heyes
Within the coming year, millions of Americans on exchanges established by Obamacare may not have a single insurer to choose from. This latest fiasco should be reason enough to finally repeal the disastrous bill once and for all and replace it with free-market, competition-oriented health insurance solutions.
And while Americans in the exchanges who have no insurer choice are exempt from the law’s mandate to obtain coverage, it still results in them having no coverage after Democrats and President Obama promised repeatedly the law would always cover everyone.
As noted by Margot Sanger-Katz in The New York Times, portions of the country “are in jeopardy of not having an insurer offering Obamacare plans next year.” This disaster comes as many parts of the country now only have one insurer from which to choose, because a number of other major insurance firms like Aetna and Humana have already left the exchanges after losing hundreds of millions of dollars each since the law was enacted. (RELATED: In some parts of U.S., Obamacare insurer choice will drop to ZERO)
Initially, insurance companies backed the law because they believed that its requirement that everyone purchase a product they sold – health insurance – would be a boon to their businesses. After all, if you had a company that sold a product that the federal government mandated that Americans had to buy it, you’d probably back that law too.
Only, in practice, Obamacare’s exchanges never did live up to their promises. Most of the people who signed up were older or already had existing health problems (or both), and as that happened, plans became more and more expensive – which in turn drove younger, healthier people from the marketplaces.
As The National Sentinel noted, the next company set to bail on the exchanges is Anthem:
There are myriad problems with the law, which is now officially in its fourth year, that cannot be fixed and won’t be fixed under the current structure. Anthem is just the latest insurer to bail… Insurers bailing on exchanges and leaving millions with no choice will only make premium prices rise, thereby making coverage-in-name-only even more profound.
Sanger-Katz noted that if Anthem leaves the exchanges, those who will be most affected are people living in significant parts of Missouri, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky and Colorado. “In places where no insurance company offers plans, there will be no way for Obamacare customers to use subsidies to buy health plans,” she wrote.
She pointed to a recent analysis that showed while many counties around the country have only one insurer, Anthem was the only insurer in the most counties.
On Saturday, President Donald J. Trump acknowledged the Times piece in a couple of tweets while pledging that “good things will happen, however, either with Republicans or Dems” – a reference to his still-valid pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare with whoever will support it:
The failing @nytimes finally gets it – "In places where no insurance company offers plans, there will be no way for ObamaCare customers to..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2017
…use subsidies to buy health plans." In other words, Ocare is dead. Good things will happen, however, either with Republicans or Dems.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2017
Trump said in a tweet last week after House Republicans failed to hold a vote on what many viewed as a bad repeal-and-replace bill that the law was on the brink of collapse, and the Times piece appears to substantiate that. But Trump had said before that 2017 was going to be the worst year for the law – the same year, conveniently, its namesake, Barack Obama, left office. (RELATED: Obamacare REPEAL? It’s more like health care system COLLAPSE!)
Speaking of Obama, his party owns this disaster lock, stock and barrel. Yes, Republicans have thus far failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act after promising for years to make it a priority once they had both Houses of Congress and the White House, however, they wouldn’t even have to tackle “health care reform” if the Democrats had not imposed this nightmare on the country, as a precursor to full-on, ‘Medicare for all,’ single-payer insurance – where government bureaucrats would decide who should and should not get certain treatments.
The implosion of Obamacare isn’t coming; it’s already here.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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