ACA coverage favorable
Published 11:33 am Friday, August 29, 2014
Since the Nixon presidency each American president has attempted to create a path to insure all Americans. Until the Obama administration, all failed at this goal. In 2010 President Obama, with the support of a democratic congress, passed The Affordable Care Act (Initially known by its opponents as Obamacare) into law.
Although the passage was a historic accomplishment that would affect millions of Americans the ACA has never reached popularity with a majority of Americans, in large part due to misinformation about the ACA advanced by republicans who opposed the president and any action he would take throughout his presidency.
In early 2014, while the abysmal failure of the ACA new website was still fresh news, Republicans openly drooled at the prospect of their 2014 election campaigns being about their desire to repeal Obamacare.
But by late summer the failures of Obamacare were largely out of public discussion and republicans had moved their target to other issues. Why? Perhaps because of the outcome of the ACA, a record that now has democrats and the president embracing “Obamacare” on the basis of its merits.
Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010 the inflationary cost curve of health care cost has been bent downward. Healthcare costs have averaged 1.3 percent over the most recent three years, less than a third of the average since 1965. Price inflation in the healthcare industry is currently at 1 percent, the lowest since 1962, according to a recent White House report.
Further, the percentage of the uninsured in America has fallen from a high of 18 percent in 2013 to 13. percent as of June, 2014 according to Gallup polling. More than 50 percent of those now newly insured argue that without the policies of the ACA they would not have been able to find healthcare insurance.
And, according the Congressional Budget Office this week, Obamacare is reducing the budget deficit. The deficit for fiscal 2013 was $608 billion, while the deficit for fiscal 2014 will be $506 billion or 2.9 percent of GDP. The deficit has averaged 3 percent over the past 40 years and the $506 billion represents a decrease in the deficit of more than 70 percent since the first year of the Obama presidency in the early stages of the Bush Great Recession.
The New York Times reports that the effect of these lower costs has changed the Medicare cost projections for 2019 by a whopping reduction of $95 billion. That savings is greater than the projected costs of unemployment insurance, Amtrak, and welfare combined.
While Medicare will still require congressional attention for the long term, its near term prospects have been significantly improved by, you guessed it, Obamacare.
But none of these advances would matter if those insured by Obamacare did not like their coverage. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey of June 2014 addresses exactly that question. Kaiser reports that 6 in 10 enrollees have a highly favorable view of their ACA coverage.
Seven in 10 report that they were uninsurable before the Affordable Care Act. 40 percent of enrollees complain that meeting the premium cost is difficult for the newly insured. Since a family policy purchased in the open market can cost as much at $17,000 annually, this is an understandable concern.
Obamacare remains unpopular with every Republican, remains disliked in Southern States (many states in the South have failed to raise their Medicaid coverage to 138 percent of poverty as offered by Obamacare at no cost to the states) and fails to top 50 percent popularity in polling.
But perhaps what really matters is something other than polling opponents; those insured like their new insurance; the cost curve has been bent for the first time in 40 years; the percentage of the uninsured have fallen significantly; the life of Medicare has been extended by the savings; and the budget deficit has been reduced by Obamacare.
This is all good news for Americans, even those who cling to their false and dire predictions about the ACA.
Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.