"The Trump Administration has promised to deliver to the American people a healthcare plan that is, in President Trump’s own words, “much less expensive and far better” than Obamacare. But While Obamacare is expected to spend over $900 billion from 2018 to 2027, focusing solely on the Obama administration’s signature achievement ignores bigger fiscal challenges; Namely, the Medicare program.
Our insurance program for the elderly and disabled – Medicare – is expected to cost $900 billion in 2024 alone. From 2018 to 2027, this comes to a whopping $8.5 trillion—an order of magnitude larger than the cost of the ACA. Beyond the topline price tag are a number of endangered programs.
Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, commonly known as Part A, is expected to run out of money in the next 10 years. This would mean an immediate reduction in benefits when the money runs out—2028, according to the program’s actuaries. Meanwhile, the funds that Medicare uses to pay for physician services (Part B) and prescription drug benefits (Part D) are consistently growing as a share of revenue". - Repeal & Replace: Missing the Medicare Forest for the Obamacare Trees, realclearhealth.com, 02/24/2017
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2017/02/24/repeal__replace_missing_the_medicare_forest_for_the_obamacare_trees_110464.html?utm_source=RCP+Morning+Note&utm_campaign=8da8cfe47f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a4db5f2336-8da8cfe47f-84790497
"We believe the American health care system is desperately in need of reform. The Affordable Care Act has failed to achieve its goal of affordable, universal coverage. Instead it has forced people, especially those in middle-income households, to choose from insurance plans with deductibles that are unreasonably high and provider networks that are too narrow to adequately help many afflicted with serious health problems.
The following proposals would vastly improve coverage by making health insurance affordable for all and by ensuring access to reliable medical care. They are incorporated in bicameral legislation introduced in the House and the Senate by Rep. Pete Sessions and Sen. Bill Cassidy and in the Patient Freedom Act, sponsored by Sen. Cassidy". - Replacing Obamacare and Insuring the Uninsured, The Independent Institute, 02/13/2017
Some highlights are:
(1) uniform tax credit for people buying their own health insurance coverage,
(2) tax credit can be used toward coverage in the individual market or the credit is transferable to an employer willing to purchase group health insurance for the individual,
(3) portability between individual and group health insurance coverage,
(4) integrate Medicaid and private insurance for seamless coverage,
(5) remove incentives for dumpling plans onto the individual market via “health status risk adjustments”,
(6) removal of mandate and the use of Medicare type penalty rates (higher premiums) for those not signing up for coverage when first eligible.
Note: At the link below one can download the “Executive Summary”.
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=8994
Note (B): A more detailed discussion appears at this link:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=8979
“Health insurance company Humana announced Tuesday that it would leave the ObamaCare market in 2018. The insurer said it would offer plans through 2017, but that the market has not stabilized enough to participate next year. Humana said it was losing money from taking on too many sick people without enough healthy people to balance the pools. The decision came after Humana scaled back participation and raised premiums, among other changes. "All of these actions were taken with the expectation that the company’s Individual Commercial business would stabilize to the point where the company could continue to participate in the program," the company said in a statement. "However, based on its initial analysis of data associated with the company’s healthcare exchange membership following the 2017 open enrollment period, Humana is seeing further signs of an unbalanced risk pool." - Death Spiral: Humana Completely Abandoning Obamacare Marketplaces After 2017, townhall.com, 02/15/2017
Link to the entire article appears below:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/02/15/death-spiral-humana-completely-abandoning-obamacare-marketplaces-after-2017-n2286358
