The nation’s health care tab hit $3.5 trillion last year, or $10,739 per person, the government reported Thursday. But behind those staggering figures was some fairly good news: The rate of growth slowed for the second year in a row, according to economic experts at the federal Health and Human Services department. Health care spending increased by 3.9 percent in 2017, following a 4.8 percent increase in 2016.
According to a new NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll, about one in five people said they have delayed or canceled some kind of health care service, such as a doctor’s appointment or medical procedure, because of cost in the preceding three months. The proportion of people who said cost had deterred them from getting care varied by age, with a third of people under 35 saying it had been a problem compared with only 8% of people 65 and older. The cost of prescriptions also appeared to be a bigger concern for younger people, with 38% of those under 35 saying they had difficulty paying for their medicine. Only 9% of people 65 and older said they had the same problem.
When the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) added healthy, able-bodied adults without dependent children to the list of beneficiaries, policymakers overlooked the substantial price paid by these recipients who, as the Congressional Budget Office once forecasted, forego hourly wages and earnings in order to maintain their Medicaid eligibility. Without a work requirement for able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid, studies have shown that the program tacitly encourages such recipients to stay home and not go to work. And, as it turns out, Medicaid’s non-work incentive has some not-so-healthy consequences.
It shouldn’t shock most observers to realize that Congress gave itself a better deal than it gave most ordinary citizens. But Ocasio-Cortez’ complaints about the lack of affordability of health insurance demonstrate the way liberals who claim to support Obamacare’s pre-existing condition “protections”—and have forcibly raised others’ premiums to pay for those “protections”—don’t want to pay those higher premiums themselves.
Enrollment in the health-care marketplaces still appears to be lagging halfway through the ACA’s sixth sign-up season. Total sign-ups this year are down by about 300,000 people compared to the same time last year—a roughly 11% decline. However, this is the first year marketplace premiums are dropping instead of rising. Not only are premiums lower, but government subsidies for low-income Americans who want health insurance continue to be more generous than in years past.
The its 2019 State of Healthcare and Politics Report from insuranceQuotes.com unveils Americans’ knowledge, views and predictions surrounding the ACA, President Trump’s impact on the law, and the state of healthcare between now and 2020.
According to the report, 41% of Americans say they do not know what healthcare open enrollment is.
Other survey findings include: 38% are unaware that the ACA is still in effect; 24% of Americans say they view the ACA less positively after the 2016 election; and 18% say their view on the ACA have been “more favorable” since the election.
It’s a good thing Democrats made health insurance “affordable” when they passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. I’d hate to see how much health insurance would cost if it were expensive.
The Kaiser Family Foundation just released its annual survey of employer-sponsored coverage, finding that the average premium for family coverage increased 5 percent to $19,616.
By the narrowest of margins, the U.S. Senate rejected legislation Wednesday that would have subjected patients with expensive illnesses to soaring premiums, canceled coverage and medical bankruptcy. You might expect such legislation to have been introduced by Republicans and defeated by Democrats, but you’d be wrong. Democrats sought to deny care to the sick. Republicans stopped them.
The average cost of employer health coverage offered to workers rose to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, capping years of increases that experts said are chiefly tied to rising prices paid for health services.
Annual premiums rose 5% to $19,616 for an employer-provided family plan in 2018, according to the yearly poll of employers by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Employers, seeking to blunt the cost of premiums, also continued to boost the deductibles that workers must pay out of their pockets before insurance kicks in