Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

No Justins, No Peace

People are complicated. Love is not.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

We still have time to mess this up!

Nothing worth doing is easy.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I really should read my own blog.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

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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