Paying More for Less

This comes from CNBC: Many Obamacare customers will be paying more for less this year, study show.

That is exactly what the free market should fix.

With the ACA, plan premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket insurance costs have grown sharply even as the size of networks of health providers covered by those plans are getting smaller.  More from the study:

  • Last year, just 4 percent of all regions of the United States had only one participating insurer on Obamacare exchange, according to Avalere’s analysis. This year, 36 percent of all regions in the U.S. will have only one participating health insurer on an Obamacare exchanges.
  • In 2017, just 31 percent of all exchange-sold plans are “preferred provider organizations” or “point of service” plans, which are wider network of doctors, are down from 52 percent of all plans in 2014, the first year of Obamacare coverage.
  • Silver plan premiums, the most commonly picked, for 2017 increased by an average of 12 percent, from $496 per month last year to $554 per month this year.
  • The average deductible for health services and drugs covered by an Obamacare plan “jumped by 20 percent for silver plans in 2017 to $3,703.”
  • The number of silver plans that impose “coinsurance” for specialty drugs, rose in 2017, from 74 percent of all such plans last year to 84 percent this year.

If people are lucky or unlucky enough to require subsidies then that will offset some of the above.  That being said, why does this keep going up?  In no other business does this happen.  As we dismantle the ACA we need to remember to dismantle the insurers!  We HAVE to figure a way to bring the free market in so that these greedy bastards have a reason to lower their prices.  And before anyone defends them please refer to their record breaking profits each and every year.