Obamacare Now
Having been in the insurance business for a long time (and having specifically also been in the Obamacare business) I still watch the news on American healthcare very closely. I especially watch it as portrayed on social networking sites. While a lot of content that is posted is sheer nonsense, in an election year it is interesting to see what kinds of things are capturing people's attention. There are the usual cherry picked statistics (posted by the Left and the Right) of course. But what's most popular are the one-off descriptions of some specific person's troubles. Premiums are going way up. The choice of doctors and hospitals is going way down. These presentations usually imply if not state that this is going to happen to everyone and therefore we are all going to die (or at least become poor).
As far as main players in the market go, unless someone is telling a tale of woe about their prescription, it's the insurance companies that are usually blamed for everything. This makes sense, since the insurance companies are the ones paying (a shrinking part of) the bill. Medical costs on the hospital and physician end are usually not addressed, unless the article or YouTube video is about comparing overall American costs to any other country in the world. This makes sense too, since one of the jobs of insurance companies in the US is to hide true medical prices and costs from the consumer. Being from the industry, watching and reading this stuff is like getting punched in the face, over and over again.
When it comes to the insurance system in the United States, many people blame Obamacare for whatever is happening now. I have been surprised that the Republicans have not picked on this more. (On the other hand, they don't have a plan, should Trump somehow win the election). Obamacare is weak in many ways. Of the 23 Obamacare Co-Ops that were originally established only 7 survive, and those 7 are not looking good. The money loaned to them is gone forever. There are some spectacular premium increases coming down in some states in 2017. Most of the largest private insurers have dropped out of the market and with the demise of smaller ones like the Co-Ops there are some counties where there are no or perhaps only one Obamacare carrier left.
The defenders of Obamacare point out that 20 million people who would not have had insurance now do. There is evidence that most people either don't seem to be aware of this or don't care. It is also the case that in the aggregate, the rise in insurance costs has significantly slowed; scant condolence for those people who are going to see a 67 percent increase next year.
I've explained on dotCommonweal (and on Facebook about 200 times) how our crazy system works in some detail and I won't do it again here. But I would like to talk about the increases in costs and access that we are seeing (at least anecdotally). Some of this might be a bit wonky, so I will make it as entertaining as I can. First subject. What on earth is going on with the cost of insurance and why is Obamacare trying to kill us?
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