Tag: Affordable Care Act

“The Affordable Care Act’s achievements are clear. People who buy insurance in the individual and small-group markets no longer face discrimination for preexisting conditions. Preventive services for Americans with all types of insurance are free. Combine the marketplaces that provide tax subsidies for private coverage and the Medicaid expansions adopted by 38 states (along with a handful of smaller provisions), and the ACA has provided coverage to about 31 million Americans, according to a new estimate from the Biden administration.

After the rocky rollout of HealthCare.gov in 2014 and a few years of soaring premiums, the law’s private marketplaces have stabilized”

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“one of the biggest gaps in the ACA itself: Medicaid. The program’s expansion to cover more low-income adults was supposed to be mandatory for all 50 states, a statutory overreach that was scaled back by the Supreme Court, where two liberal justices joined the conservatives to rule that the expansion must be optional.

As a result, 12 states still refuse to expand Medicaid. An estimated 4 million people who would have been covered by the expansion remain uninsured.”

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“Some people who purchase private insurance through the law can still face high out-of-pocket costs. Some of the health plans sold on the marketplaces have deductibles as high as $6,000 for an individual or $13,000 for a family — and those are usually the cheapest plans available. Until this year, people who made too much money to qualify for the law’s subsidies had to pay the full cost for their insurance, making it unaffordable for some.”

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“one core problem remains: While every other developed country in the world enjoys universal (or near-universal) health coverage, 1 in 10 people living in the United States still don’t have insurance.

That number is lower than it was before 2010, when it was about 17 percent. But it is an embarrassing outlier among our economic peers. Americans also spend more of their own money on their health care than people in almost every other country.”

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“America spends more money on health care for worse outcomes than its peer countries, as researchers have noted time and again. On a global index of health care quality and access, the US trails many more socialized systems. Life expectancy has dipped in recent years, ending decades of progress and dropping the US further behind comparable countries.

There is no denying that the high quality of health care available in the United States — for those who can afford it. The US health care industry can undoubtedly be among the most innovative in the world: It was American science that cured hepatitis-C in the last decade. The success of the country’s Covid-19 vaccine development, production and distribution is undeniable.

But prioritizing innovation above all else creates its own problems, leaving US health policy captive to private interests.”