I’ll link the summary. Apparently, our uninsured rate has moved from 7.9% to 8.5% from 2017 to 2018. The big loss in coverage seems to be in Medicaid. I guess we’re to assume that Trump’s policies of sabotage are going to continue to move the needle in the direction of more uninsured.
The weird thing is that this occurred during a period of good economic growth, which almost never happens. In the past, good economic growth tended to see a drop in uninsured.
I think the Dems can use this report during the election to attack Trump, and they should.
**
The Uninsured rate is increasing according to the Census…**
Well, there is a solution to that problem.
Simply stop the intrusive government from collecting data via the census. Our last Conservative government in Canada tried this stunt, and it almost worked. Stupid statisticians and scientists were messing up the Conservative plans with data and facts and shit. That would not stand!
The Trump administration had allowed states to place work requirements on Medicaid eligiblity; though those are apparently on hold at the moment, roughly 2 million fewer people are now covered by Medicaid (without a corresponding increase in coverage by private insurance)
With the removal of the individual mandate for health coverage under the ACA, some people who may have had an ACA policy a few years ago may have dropped the coverage, as there’s no longer a tax penalty for not having one
The administration has cut back on the advertising and outreach that the Health Exchange does to publicize ACA plans
In addition, things I know simply because I work in the industry:
The premium rates for ACA policies have pretty consistently risen year to year, and even the lower-tier policies can be quite expensive in the absolute
For many people looking to buy an individual policy, there are fewer options for ACA policies now – in 2018, there were eight states in which there was only a single company offering ACA policies (up from five in 2017)
The amazing thing though is that the ACA exchanges have held up rather well, even with the attack by Trump. There are companies in every county of every state that offer something, which was very much in doubt after Trump ordered that CSR payments were to stop, and then the Tax Act got rid of the mandate penalty.
Trump’s actions have hurt the exchanges. And they’ve forced companies to essentially price the people who don’t get subsidies almost out of the market. But there’s a core of customers, who receive subsidies, who are shielded from the rate increases to an extent, who still buy on the exchanges.
In order for the ACA to work as it was originally designed, there needs to be a real mandate penalty. The government needs to beef up their subsidies, and extend them to people who make over 400%FPL. And the rest of the states need to accept the Medicaid expansion. If all of this happened, then the ACA would have a very good, robust customer-base.