{"id":5675,"date":"2021-07-27T15:32:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T15:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5675"},"modified":"2021-07-27T15:32:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-27T15:32:51","slug":"what-obamacare-achieved-and-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=5675","title":{"rendered":"What Obamacare achieved \u2014 and didn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“The Affordable Care Act\u2019s achievements are clear. People who buy insurance in the individual and small-group markets no longer face discrimination for\u00a0preexisting<\/a> conditions.<\/a>\u00a0Preventive services for Americans with all types of insurance\u00a0are free<\/a>. 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\u00a0a new estimate<\/a>\u00a0from the Biden administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


After the rocky rollout of\u00a0HealthCare.gov<\/a>\u00a0in 2014 and a few years of soaring premiums, the law\u2019s private marketplaces have stabilized”
…
“one of the biggest gaps in the ACA itself: Medicaid. The program\u2019s 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\u00a0still refuse to expand Medicaid<\/a>. An estimated 4 million people who would have been covered by the expansion remain uninsured.”
…
“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 \u2014 and those are usually the cheapest plans available. Until this year, people who made too much money to qualify for the law\u2019s subsidies had to pay the full cost for their insurance, making it unaffordable for some.”
…
“one core problem remains: While every other developed country in the world enjoys universal (or near-universal) health coverage,\u00a01 in 10 people<\/a>\u00a0living in the United States still don\u2019t have insurance.
That number is lower than it was before 2010, when it was about 17 percent. But it is\u00a0an embarrassing outlier<\/a>\u00a0among our economic peers. Americans also\u00a0spend more of their own money<\/a>\u00a0on their health care than people in almost every other country.”
…
“America spends more money on health care for worse outcomes than its peer countries, as researchers have noted\u00a0time<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0again<\/a>. On\u00a0a global index of health care quality and access<\/a>, the US trails many more socialized systems. Life expectancy has\u00a0dipped<\/a>\u00a0in recent years, ending decades of progress and dropping the US further behind comparable countries.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no denying that the high quality of health care available in the United States \u2014 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\u00a0cured hepatitis-C<\/a>\u00a0in the last decade.\u00a0The success<\/a>\u00a0of the country\u2019s 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n


https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/22529751\/supreme-court-affordable-care-act-obamacare-2021<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Affordable Care Act\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

After the rocky rollout of HealthCare.gov in 2014 and a few years of soaring premiums, the law\u2019s private marketplaces have stabilized”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“one of the biggest gaps in the ACA itself: Medicaid. The program\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“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 \u2014 and those are usually the cheapest plans available. Until this year, people who made too much money to qualify for the law\u2019s subsidies had to pay the full cost for their insurance, making it unaffordable for some.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“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\u2019t have insurance.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

There is no denying that the high quality of health care available in the United States \u2014 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\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine development, production and distribution is undeniable.<\/p>\n

But prioritizing innovation above all else creates its own problems, leaving US health policy captive to private interests.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[76,541,334,80,73,77,411,619],"class_list":["post-5675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-aca","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-health-insurance","tag-health-system","tag-healthcare","tag-obamacare","tag-policy","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5676,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5675\/revisions\/5676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}