Reply to DC Health Exchange- all options are really expensive?

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "DC Health Exchange- all options are really expensive?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]Jeff,

Re your 10:35 post, it's not clear that insurance will be affordable even with the subsidies. Less expensive, yes. But genuinely affordable, that's not clear, since the government isn't privy to households' actual cost-of-living expenses. Medicaid expansion isn't happening in all 50 states. Insurance companies have been allowing parents to keep children on their plans until age 26 for years, so not sure how much the ACA is impacting this category. Pre-existing: Yes, that's a great thing. But can states opt out of that, too? They're opting out of the marketplace and Medicaid expansion.

Net-net, with the shifts in the industry, is this a win-win? It's too early to tell. For now, the sum of it remains dispiriting. 
[/quote]

I think you are confusing "expanding access for insurance" with "providing coverage to every single individual". Will the subsidies make insurance affordable for everyone? Likely not. As is the case for just about everything else, people have different priorities. Some people will prioritize something ahead of health insurance -- perhaps logically, for example, if they need the money for food, but perhaps illogically. But, I don't think you can argue that access will not be expanded at all through the subsidies.

I don't know how common it was before the ACA for insurance companies to allow children to stay on their parents' coverage. But, I know that the ACA made it universal and it has been one of the most popular facets of Obamacare.  Again, it's hard to argue that this has not expanded coverage at all.

Similar to Medicaid expansion. Obviously, it is not expanding coverage in those states that refused to accept it. It is obviously expanding coverage in those states that did.

States cannot opt out of the pre-existing condition prohibition. Amusingly, I've seen a number of Republicans who propose to "repeal and replace" Obamacare state that this is something that would be in the replacement. How they would manage that without an individual mandate remains to be seen.

Also, states cannot opt-out of the exchanges. They can choose not to have their own exchange, but then the Feds build one for them. Every state has an exchange.

I don't think anyone can logically argue that access to insurance is not being expanded. It can be argued that some are receiving less affordable or less convenient access -- and some may be dropping insurance as a result. But, such individuals are not being denied access, they are choosing not to use the access available to them.

It should also be noted that we've seen companies expand access to health insurance as a result of the ACA. For instance, Disney World very publicly announced that it would convert part time workers to full time in order to give them health benefits.
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics