If Clinton wins in November, can she fix Obamacare?

The landmark health care law is struggling with premium increases and insurer exits, posing a problem for the next president.

|
Paul Sancya/AP/File
In this file photo, Hillary Clinton visits a medical office on the campaign trail.

With the hourglass running out for his administration, President Barack Obama's health care law is struggling in many parts of the country. Double-digit premium increases and exits by big-name insurers have caused some to wonder whether "Obamacare" will go down as a failed experiment.

If Democrat Hillary Clinton wins the White House, expect her to mount a rescue effort. But how much Clinton could do depends on finding willing partners in Congress and among Republican governors, a real political challenge.

"There are turbulent waters," said Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's first secretary of Health and Human Services. "But do I see this as a death knell? No."

Next year's health insurance sign-up season starts a week before the Nov. 8 election, and the previews have been brutal. Premiums are expected to go up sharply in many insurance marketplaces, which offer subsidized private coverage to people lacking access to job-based plans.

At the same time, retrenchment by insurers that have lost hundreds of millions of dollars means that more areas will become one-insurer markets, losing the benefits of competition. The consulting firm Avalere Health projects that seven states will only have one insurer in each of their marketplace regions next year.

Administration officials say insurers set prices too low in a bid to gain market share, and the correction is leading to sticker shock. Insurers blame the problems on sicker-than-expected customers, disappointing enrollment and a premium stabilization system that failed to work as advertised. They also say some people are gaming the system, taking advantage of guaranteed coverage to get medical care only when they are sick.

Not all state markets are in trouble. What is more important, most of the 11 million people covered through HealthCare.gov and its state-run counterparts will be cushioned from premium increases by government subsidies that rise with the cost.

But many customers may have to switch to less comprehensive plans to keep their monthly premiums down. And millions of people who buy individual policies outside the government marketplaces get no financial help. They will have to pay the full increases or go without coverage and risk fines. (People with employer coverage and Medicare are largely unaffected.)

Tennessee's insurance commissioner said recently that the individual health insurance market in her state is "very near collapse." Premiums for the biggest insurer are expected to increase by an average of 62 percent. Two competitors will post average increases of 46 percent and 44 percent.

But because the spigot of federal subsidies remains wide open, an implosion of health insurance markets around the country seems unlikely. More than 8 out of 10 HealthCare.gov customers get subsidies covering about 70 percent of their total premiums. Instead, the damage is likely to be gradual. Rising premiums deter healthy people from signing up, leaving an insurance pool that's more expensive to cover each succeeding year.

"My real concern is 2018," said Caroline Pearson, a senior vice president with Avalere. "If there is no improvement in enrollment, we could see big sections of the country without any plans participating."

If Republican Donald Trump wins the White House, he'd start dismantling the Affordable Care Act. But Clinton would come with a long list of proposed fixes, from rearranging benefits to introducing a government-sponsored "public option" as an alternative to private insurers. Not all her ideas would require congressional action.

"She is going to find it important to continue to expand health care," said Joel Ario, a former Obama administration official who's now with the consulting firm Mannatt Health.

People in the Clinton camp say she recognizes that as president she'd have to get Obama's law working better, and is taking nothing off the table.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to If Clinton wins in November, can she fix Obamacare?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/0828/If-Clinton-wins-in-November-can-she-fix-Obamacare
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe