Study: Half a Million More Uninsured by 2019, Four Million More by 2025
A new study by Professor Steve Parente and Professor Michael Ramlet estimates that the number of uninsured will increase under ObamaCare, from 36.5 million in 2015 to 40.5 million in 2025. It further estimates that the average cost of an ObamaCare Silver plan will increase by over $4,000 in five years.
Nationally, we estimate an initial decrease in the uninsured with greater use of the private health insurance subsidies, but over time health plan prices are likely to increase faster than the value of the insurance subsidy. As a result of the declining purchasing power of the insurance subsidy, the implementation of the qualified health plan requirements and the end of the reinsurance and risk corridor programs we estimate a significant reduction in the private insurance market in 2017 with steady declines continuing for the rest of the decade. The Medicaid population is estimated to grow substantially in 2015 as more individuals are enrolled in states who have chosen to expand the program. Medicaid enrollment is estimated to slow down to between 2% to 3% each year from 2016 to 2024.
I guess they had not heard the President’s declaration that the debate over ObamaCare is over.
So, what is the next move? When enrollment starts to fall, what do they do to counteract it?
You can always break out your Crystal Ball like this article does.
Increase prices of the premiums. That is the only way the system can pay for itself. However, once it gets too expensive then everyone may drop coverage. Or government spending on subsidies will increase.
If there was a large turnout of enrollees, there wouldn’t be an issue of prices increasing substantially. But what the government didn’t take into account is that people are rational in their spending.
Mitch, they’ll say they need to spend even more money on this travesty, or they will blame the “greedy” insurance companies or doctors who will opt out of ObamaCare. The point is, any problems with this law will never be the fault of the politicians and bureaucrats who designed it, only the fault of others.
Add “universal coverage” to “if you like your doctor…” and the other list of lies from this president.
We need to change the narrative and start removing barriers to care rather than continually being preoccupied with whether someone has insurance. There are numerous ways to boost access to care. Evaluating scope of practice regulations, evaluate corporate practice of medicine, boosting the number of medications that are over-the-counter, encouraging 3-year medical degrees for primary care, etc.
It sounds a lot like their projections would fit the J-Curve in economics, but only with uninsured on the y-axis. At first, uninsured persons will decrease then increase rapidly in the future.
Gerald, that could be true with respect to the absolute number of people insured, but population growth may account for the numbers of uninsured they produce. In any event, the promise of universal coverage was dubious from the very beginning as the ACA never even gets close to providing universal coverage. Not in the beginning of its implementation nor several years later.
Devon is right. Michael Cannon has been saying for years that insurance is not the only way to get healthcare to more people.
My own proposals in this area also focus on more free enterprise for primary and ambulatory care — such as minute clinics, cash-only clinics, community health centers, et al.
The vast majority of Americans can pay several hundred dollars a year, even $2,000 a year, to repair and maintain their cars, and this is not considered a crisis….they can do the same for their bodies.
However, if we are going to let people be uninsured for primary care, we must do something about catastrophic care. You do need health insurance for almost any kind of hospital stay. (and hospitals need you to have insurance, otherwise they will eventually go broke. American hospitals cannot survive on cash customers.)
Devon, do you favor an individual mandate for catastrophic coverage? If not, then what?
“It further estimates that the average cost of an ObamaCare Silver plan will increase by over $4,000 in five years.”
If this is the estimate, then I think it is clear that the younger population have not signed for coverage and it is the older crowd getting and keeping plans from the ObamaCare exchanges.
Prices should have leveled out if the appropriate amount of young people signed up, since they are the ones relied upon to pay for the more expensive recipients. They had little incentive to get coverage from the exchanges, and it shows they are acting on these lack of incentives.