Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives On Obamacare: Where Millennials Stand; Overlooking The Health Law's Merits And Examining Its Flaws
ObamaCare won鈥檛 work without young Americans like me, and the Obama administration knows it. That鈥檚 why the president is holding a Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit focused on the Affordable Care Act at the White House on Tuesday. But no matter what the president says, many young Americans simply aren鈥檛 buying what he鈥檚 selling鈥攎ainly because we can鈥檛 afford it. (David Barnes, 9/25)
But it鈥檚 important to remember that many, if not most, of the newly covered Americans became insured through an expansion of Medicaid. Here, too, you hear a lot of bad news: that Medicaid offers poor quality and little choice of providers, that it is expensive for the states to administer and that its growing cost will eventually bankrupt states. As of today, 19 states have still refused to participate in the expansion. Such declarations consider only one side of the equation, though. In most ways, Medicaid offers an excellent return on investment. (Aaron E. Carroll, 9/26)
Insurers have announced that they are sharply raising prices or pulling out entirely. Many consumers will have fewer choices of insurance plans, and many insurance plans will include fewer doctors and hospitals.聽The turmoil can鈥檛 be explained by one factor alone. But many of the most important problems can be understood if you think of an Obamacare marketplace as a particular kind of restaurant: an all-you-can-eat buffet. It can be a solid business, but it鈥檚 hard to get the pricing right. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 9/23)
Since the ACA mandates that everyone have health insurance, the federal government provided health insurance to citizens who earn too much to be eligible for Medicaid but too little to pay for insurance. Whether the state created its own exchange or relied on the federal exchange, citizens are allowed a subsidy by the federal government if their income is less than 400 percent of the federal poverty limit. A family of four would have to make slightly less than $100,000 to be eligible for a federal subsidy.If Texas were to expand the Medicaid offering, the result would likely be similar to what California experienced. That was a 51 percent increase in Medicaid recipients. (Alan Preston, 9/24)
