Remember when then-President Barack Obama—and echoed by virtually every elected Democrat and most of the mainstream media—promised that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) would fundamentally change the health insurance market, vastly increasing the number of insured Americans while dramatically lowering the cost of coverage? You likely won’t be surprised to learn that didn’t happen.
A new study from Daniel Cruz and Greg Fann of the Paragon Health Institute shows just how far short Obamacare has fallen from its lofty promises.
Let’s start with coverage. According to Paragon, “Federal spending on the ACA exchanges, totaling $60 billion in 2021, resulted in an increase of 1.6 million Americans covered under private insurance. Overall, employer coverage dropped by 1.3 million enrollees, and non-group coverage increased by 2.9 million enrollees.”
So non-group coverage (where individuals buy their own coverage) went up but employer coverage went down. The net increase in private coverage was 1.6 million.
But aren’t we told that the number of uninsured has dropped under the ACA? Yes, but that’s because the ACA expanded Medicaid eligibility. “Of the 19 million additional Americans with health coverage after the ACA was implemented, 17.4 million were covered under the newly eligible Medicaid expansion group,” according to Paragon. The 1.6 million difference (19M-17.4M) were those with private coverage mentioned above. CBO had projected an insured increase of 25 million Americans, with roughly half of them (about 12.5 million) receiving private coverage.
Now, as to affordability. If you are one of the relatively few—at least when compared to the Democrats’ and Congressional Budget Office’s predictions—who buy taxpayer-subsidized coverage through an Obamacare exchange, you likely have very affordable premiums.
“Affordable,” that is, to the insured, not taxpayers. “ACA exchange spending of $60 billion in 2021 cost taxpayers $36,798 per additional private insurance enrollee ($20,739 per additional non-group enrollee), more than triple CBO’s original projections of $10,538 and $6,850, respectively.”
Ironically, coverage is often not affordable to the insured either. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “This year the average individual annual deductibles in bronze, silver, and gold plans sold on HealthCare.gov are $7,481, $4,890, and $1,650, respectively.”
Nothing says affordable like a $7,500 or $4,900 per-person deductible.
It is true that millions of Americans have enrolled in Obamacare, receiving coverage they did not have before. It is also true that it has cost taxpayers far more and increased coverage by far fewer than Democrats promised.
September 26, 2023