This is good news for people like me, who will soon be working for a living again, and will most likely need help from this new healthcare law.
The Story:
One of these days, a dire prediction about Obamacare will come true. Today isn’t it.
The Administration on Thursday released new information about the “Federally Facilitated Marketplaces.” Under Obamacare, every state must have an exchange—a place where people without employer-sponsored insurance can find insurance. Some states are running their own exchanges. Others are asking the federal government to do most, or all of, the work. Those federal-run exchanges are the FFMs.
To be successful, exchanges must have enough plans to generate some competition. The whole idea of the exchanges is to let people shop around, seeking the best combination of benefits, service, and prices—just as they might shop for a car, an accountant, or any other good or service. Yes, that’s probably more of a conservative idea than a liberal one. But, for competition to take place, insurers must participate. And conservatives have predicted the insurers would stay away, because of Obamacare’s supposedly onerous regulations and a fear that the whole system is doomed to collapse.
Even liberals like me have worried how the insurers might act—and, sure enough, some carriers really do seem wary. But plenty aren’t. On Thursday, the administration announced it expects the FFMs to have more than sufficient competition. At least one new insurer will be offering plans in about three-fourths of the FFMs, according to the administration, and 90 percent of “target enrollees” (people the administration is hoping will use the exchanges) will be able to choose from at least five different insurers. Given the poor state of competition that exists in many states today, the administration says, that’s a big improvement.
The data is preliminary and sketchy—and the improvement may not be as dramatic as the administration made it sound. “I would characterize it as modest plan competition,” Caroline Pearson, vice president for health reform at Avalere Helath, told Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post. “In most markets, there seems to be a bit more choice than what’s available in the market today. But we’re certainly not seeing a wild influx of plans into the market.”
via Obamacare Insurance Options: Looks like exchanges will have plenty | New Republic.
Believe me when I tell you, I am not a huge fan of President Obama and I was not too keen on the idea of “Obamacare.” However, I will tell you this, if anyone knows all about the cost of rising healthcare in this Country — It would be me. I had to cancel my health insurance that I was getting through the COBRA program. It just kept going up and finally, I simply decided to stop putting out that kind of money; and this was back when I was working full-time as a straight truck driver.
Needless to say, I am glad to hear that the Republicans might just be wrong on this little issue here. 😀
Oh, and by the way, I have some pretty darned good reasons for feeling this way too. 😡
Others: News Desk, The Plum Line and Wonkblog