“More Americans are turning to cheaper Obamacare plans to avoid premium sticker shock, according to preliminary data from states.
But the switch comes with a caveat: thousands in extra out-of-pocket costs that policy researchers say may make people hesitate to get medical care when they are sick or injured.
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The subsidies’ expiration on Jan. 1 caused annual premiums to spike more than $1,000 on average for subsidized enrollees, according to one estimate from the health research organization KFF.”
“The HHS stressed on Monday that all 17 vaccines, including those no longer recommended for all children, will still be covered at no out-of-pocket cost to patients by government and private health insurance plans.”
“Mark Cuban is taking aim at the U.S. healthcare system, arguing that widespread billing abuse by insurers and providers could be a major source of federal revenue–if only they were held accountable.
“If we fined insurers and providers $100 every time they over-billed, incorrectly denied care or misrepresented any amount of patient out of pocket, we could pay off the national debt,” the billionaire entrepreneur posted on X last week.”
By letting the Covid-era boost to ACA subsidies end, Republicans are making health insurance for 24 million people much much more expensive. These are people who: don’t get subsidized health insurance at work, make too much for Medicaid, but also too much for regular ACA subsidies. Many are small business owners.
For low-value medical care, it helps to have consumer skin in the game, but that isn’t what drives healthcare costs. Healthcare costs are driven by needed care and not the overuse of unneeded care.
“After a few months in the program, Smith was no longer diabetic, and she has now been sober for two and a half years.
Her story highlights the success of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, which launched in North Carolina in March 2022. The program had benefits beyond health and quality-of-life improvements; researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill found the program saved $1,020 a year per recipient on health care costs, and the 38,000 participants had “significantly lower” emergency room visits than their peers.
The program was unique, funded with a five-year, $650 million federal grant approved by the first Donald Trump administration. The idea was to use fresh food, safe housing and transportation — social and economic factors that researchers say determine 80 percent of a person’s health — to improve the lives of the sickest, most expensive patients.
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But the Healthy Opportunities Pilot shows the limits of such food-based interventions in public policy. These programs often require longer-term investments, chafing against the cost-cutting instincts that characterize Trump’s second term and legislatures in most red states — the policy level at which most MAHA ideas are put into practice.
In the case of HOP, the Joe Biden administration approved a Medicaid waiver last December to continue the program in North Carolina, which Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, hoped to expand throughout the state over the next two years. But in June, the Republican-led state legislature declined to fund it. State lawmakers argue the program costs more than it saves — a claim that state policy experts dispute because of the way Republican lawmakers were calculating the numbers. These experts say the long-term savings potential was given short shrift.”
“Senate Republicans will block a Democratic bill that would keep federal food aid flowing to 42 million Americans as they try to build pressure to reopen the government, Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday.
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Thune separately told reporters that if the Senate starts “going down the road of … take care of this group or that group … it just begs the larger question, how long is this going to drag on?”
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Democrats and even privately some Republican lawmakers argue the Trump administration has the legal authority to tap a $5 billion contingency fund, or other USDA funds, to ensure SNAP benefits keep flowing during the shutdown. Dozens of Democratic governors and attorneys general have sued the administration over its decision not to tap those funds.”