Summary by The Market Institute of Cato Institute Policy Analysis #745
The Cato Institute recently Policy Analysis #745 by Michael D. Tanner that examines the failings of the Affordable Care Act. The media’s reporting of Obamacare has largely centered on the technical failures of Healthcare.gov, but the impact on employers, providers, patients, and consumers is becoming apparent. By creating a government mandated top-down centralized approach to healthcare, Obamacare is creating more problems than it is solving.
In regards to President Obama’s declaration (on at least 32 different occasions) that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it,” roughly 5.4 million people’s policies have been canceled as of December 2013 with millions more expected in the coming months. Since the employer-mandate was delayed by a year, Americans that have employee-sponsored coverage will be subject to a round of canceled policies. One of the main issues with the cancelled policies is they do not meet “minimum requirements” as mandated by the ACA. Often these cancellations are over minor issues that should not warrant the loss of coverage.
Obamacare is forcing some consumers to have to change their physicians because they are forced to buy new plans that do not have the same doctors in their new network. In states that have renowned major medical centers, many insurance plans are excluding them from their network of providers. Insurers are the ones making these decisions, but they are being put into a position of higher costs due to the ACA and thus a need to offset them. More troubling is the lack of alternative insurance plans in the exchanges. If a consumer wanted coverage from the best providers, there may not be a plan on the exchange that would cover them.
Despite the proclamations by many that the ACA would provide near-universal coverage for Americans, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the same number of Americans (57 million) that were uninsured pre-ACA will still be uninsured in 2023. A Gallup Poll in December 2013 indicated at least 28% of presently uninsured Americans say they will not sign up for health coverage under the ACA. There are still unknowns about the ACA that are cause for concern. Namely, could adverse selection in the risk pools spark a system wide collapse of the insurance markets? Also, will Obamacare care force doctors out of their profession when they are most needed with an aging population and a shortage of physicians? Finally, there are still court cases working their way through the system that could very well doom the implementation of the ACA.
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