The latest HHS report should prompt policymakers to abandon enrollment totals as Obamacare’s overriding report card. Health insurance should be judged by whether it gives patients access to timely, affordable care — not simply by how many subsidized policies insurers manage to sell.
The latest federal report on Obamacare’s insurance exchanges has prompted an outcry from Democrats and Republicans alike. Released this summer by the Department of Health and Human Services, the study found that marketplace enrollment fell by roughly 3 million this year. It attributed as much as half of that decline to the removal of “improper, phantom or fraudulent” enrollees.
Democrats blame Republicans for letting pandemic-era enhanced premium tax credits expire — and thereby making insurance more costly for millions. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has focused on people who improperly — or even fraudulently — obtained publicly subsidized coverage.
Both sides are missing the larger scandal. For years, Washington has treated enrollment growth as Obamacare’s defining measure of success. That fixation enriched insurers, weakened safeguards against abuse, and obscured whether marketplace plans actually provided affordable access to care.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.
Obamacare counts insurance cards, not access to care
Sally C. Pipes
The latest HHS report should prompt policymakers to abandon enrollment totals as Obamacare’s overriding report card. Health insurance should be judged by whether it gives patients access to timely, affordable care — not simply by how many subsidized policies insurers manage to sell.
The latest federal report on Obamacare’s insurance exchanges has prompted an outcry from Democrats and Republicans alike. Released this summer by the Department of Health and Human Services, the study found that marketplace enrollment fell by roughly 3 million this year. It attributed as much as half of that decline to the removal of “improper, phantom or fraudulent” enrollees.
Democrats blame Republicans for letting pandemic-era enhanced premium tax credits expire — and thereby making insurance more costly for millions. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has focused on people who improperly — or even fraudulently — obtained publicly subsidized coverage.
Both sides are missing the larger scandal. For years, Washington has treated enrollment growth as Obamacare’s defining measure of success. That fixation enriched insurers, weakened safeguards against abuse, and obscured whether marketplace plans actually provided affordable access to care.
Read more here.
Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.