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The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 42 November 7, 2016
(front page)
Obamacare costs soar, workers face health crisis
BY EMMA JOHNSON
Going into its fourth enrollment season, President Barack Obama’s
Affordable Care Act is increasingly proving to be an unaffordable
noncare act for millions of working people. Insurance premiums for 2017
will rocket in many states, and at least 1.4 million people will lose
the plans they’re currently buying through the Obamacare “exchange”
markets.
For the 150 million workers who have insurance through their employers,
the situation is also dire. Deductibles — sums that must be paid out of
pocket before the insurance kicks in — have risen nearly six times
faster than wages since 2011. Millions more are paying a fine for not
having insurance.
While Obamacare made some changes workers don’t want to lose, such as
forbidding health insurance companies to refuse an individual coverage
because of a pre-existing health condition, millions are being adversely
affected by the program’s deepening crisis.
Former President Bill Clinton made headlines Oct. 3 when he described
Obamacare as a “crazy system” where more people have insurance, but many
“wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.” By
acknowledging what so many workers already know, he gave Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton an opportunity to stress that
she’ll “fix what’s broken” with the scheme she supports.
Republican Donald Trump says he will scrap Obamacare, and claims he’ll
increase competition and lower costs by lifting regulation on companies
selling insurance across state lines.
Both are committed to maintaining medical care as a private business.
“Working people need health care, not health insurance,” Socialist
Workers Party presidential candidate Alyson Kennedy told the Militant
Oct. 25. “The working class and the union movement need to fight for
lifetime, universal, government-funded health care for all. The
so-called Affordable Care Act guarantees superprofits for the insurance,
hospital and pharmaceutical capitalists.
“Through our labor, the working class, in this country and worldwide,
produces more than enough wealth to provide education, health care,
housing, and retirement to every human being on earth, for a lifetime,”
Kennedy continued. “Workers and farmers in Cuba set an example when they
took power, pulled medical care out of the capitalist market and rebuilt
it on values of human solidarity.”
Workers who have bought insurance on the Obamacare exchanges can expect
an average 25 percent rate increase next year. Some state officials,
including in Minnesota, Tennessee and Montana, have approved hikes more
in the range of 50 percent. While many people should see the increase
offset by government subsidies, some 6 million won’t.
Since Obamacare was enacted in 2010 the number of people without health
insurance has dropped from 48.6 million to 28.6, according to the
National Center for Health Statistics. More than 80 percent of those
eligible who have incomes below 150 percent of the federal poverty level
have bought insurance on the exchanges. Only 17 percent of eligible
workers with incomes from three to four times the poverty level have
enrolled.
For insurance tycoons this is a problem: too many people are too poor
and too sick to make profits on. Insurance giants United Health, Humana
and Aetna quit some exchanges because they “contain too many sick
customers who make claims, and not enough younger, healthy ones. This
has winnowed profits and in some cases pushed the insurers into losses,”
the Financial Times reported Aug. 30. United Health, the country’s
largest insurer, pulled out of Obamacare in 27 states after losing $475
million on that business last year.
Of the 23 Obamacare co-ops organized by state governments, 17 have
closed down. Tennessee’s insurance commissioner warns that her state’s
exchange market is “very near collapse.”
Next year Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming will
have only one insurer, as will one-third of all counties nationwide,
primarily those in rural areas. Pinal County in Arizona may end up with
none.
The federal government will impose a plan on those who have lost their
insurer, unless they opt out or select plans on their own.
Four out of five workers who get health insurance through employers pay
deductibles, which rose four times faster than the premiums this year to
an average of $1,500. Workers are also paying a greater share of the
premiums, averaging $5,277 a year toward a family plan.
A growing number of companies are limiting the choices and services,
making it more expensive or impossible to see a doctor outside the
plan’s network.
Various proposals have been floated in the election debates and
capitalist media on how to “fix” the system. They include a public
insurance option to compete on the exchanges, further limits on what the
plans cover, increasing subsidies for the poorest and higher penalties
for not buying insurance. But none of these change the fundamental
problem that health care is a profit-making commodity under capitalism.
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