Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Bad news everybody

Bad news everybody

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Gallup reports that the uninsured rate is increasing:

 The percentage of U.S. adults without health insurance was essentially unchanged in the fourth quarter of 2017, at 12.2%, but it is up 1.3 percentage points from the record low of 10.9% found in the last quarter of 2016.

I think that number will continue to increase over the next couple of years.  Here are the factors that will lead to more people uncovered:

  • Higher premiums for off-Exchange/non-subsidized enrollment
  • Less marketing and outreach for on-Exchange/subsidized enrollment
  • No individual mandate
  • Messaging environment that deprioritizes coverage
  • Medicaid work requirements and hassle barriers

There are some factors that could lead to more people covered

    • Continued aging into Medicare
    • Cherry picking of healthy individual market folks into short term plans at very low premiums.
    • Continued Silverloading due to the non-funding of CSR.
    • 1332 waivers that prioritize reinsurance using the CSR windfall to lower premiums for off-Exchange individuals.

I think that as long as the fundamental structure of the ACA is in place and even if it acts as a high cost high risk pool, there is an upper limit on the number of people who are uninsured.  I am not quite sure where that limit is but I strongly believe it is significantly less than 18%.

 

 

Reader Interactions

10Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Catherine Rampell has (as usual) a great column out today on ‘backdoor repeal of Obamacare via regulations’ – worth everyone’s time and re-tweeting, etc etc

    Unable to roll back Obamacare’s health-care expansion legislatively, they’re now doing so administratively, through a series of technical, boring-sounding regulatory changes.

    This GOP effort ramped up last week, when the Trump administration began allowing states to erect new barriers to Medicaid eligibility.

    In the half-century since Medicaid was first created, eligibility has always been based almost entirely on financial circumstances such as income and assets; the program’s goal, after all, was to help less-well-off Americans obtain medical care. Last week, though, the Trump administration announced that it would start allowing states to impose other requirements on Medicaid recipients, including proof that they are working, looking for work, volunteering or in school.

    “I was raised with a mind-set to work, give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay,” Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) said at a news conference announcing that his state was the first to receive a waiver allowing Medicaid work requirements. “It’s the very same thinking that we want to bring to people here in Kentucky that are able to participate.”

    But there’s no reason to think, in Kentucky or other states itching to add work requirements, that there are legions of Medicaid loafers. Nearly 8 in 10 Medicaid-enrolled nonelderly adults already live in working families, and most (60 percent) are working themselves, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Most who are not working report major impediments to their ability to get a job, such as illness, disability, school enrollment or caregiving responsibilities.

    But that won’t necessarily protect eligible low-income people from being kicked off Medicaid rolls anyway.

    Verifying that beneficiaries meet work requirements will impose a huge and costly new administrative burden on states, and also on the working poor. As the Trump administration letter approving Kentucky’s work requirements acknowledged, the state’s Medicaid phone lines are already overwhelmed. If working Kentuckians are unable to cut through the red tape, they can get locked out of the system for six months.

    Basically a ‘poll tax’ on Medicaid.

    I don’t remember a ‘poll tax’ being required for people to access their mortgage interest deduction, or lower pass-through corporation tax rates, do you?

  4. 4.

    sherparick

    For the multi-millionaire and billionaire donors who control the Republican Party, its all about “freedom” in that they will feel ever so free once the entire Great Society and New Deal or repeal and its “1928” in America once more (or even better “1858.”

  5. 5.

    mai naem mobile

    Dolt45 will first say ‘fake news, fake news’ and then follow it with ‘its tHar Black Muslin Kenyan Obama’s fault.’

  10. 10.

    Balconesfault

    More uninsured means more medical bankruptcy which means more assets available to predatory capitalists. Win!

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