Ken Berwitz
With the 2016 sign-upseason two weeks away, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwellset a target of 10 million people enrolled and paying their premiums by the endof next year. That\’s about as many as are covered now through the law\’s onlinemarkets for subsidized private health insurance.
The administration\’snew target is well below an estimate from congressional budget analysts ofabout 20 million covered in 2016. The huge difference quickly raised questionsabout whether advances in health insurance coverage under President Obama\’s lawmay sputter or stall, leaving millions still uninsured.
“If enrollmentplateaus, we may see growing discussion of whether the law is fulfillingexpectations in covering the uninsured, and whether the subsidies for low- andmiddle-income people are sufficient to make coverage truly affordable,”said Larry Levitt, an expert on the law with the nonpartisan Kaiser FamilyFoundation.
As meticulouslyreported by The Republic\’s Ken Alltucker, high costs and anunstable market for insurance covering individuals is prompting four ofthe biggest insurers in Arizona to both raise rates and switch to plans limitingcustomers to a narrow field of doctors and hospitals.
Some of the topArizona insurers operating on the federal healthcare.gov marketplace said theyare discontinuing the more popular preferred-provider plans for thousands ofcustomers. Instead, they will be offering only HMOs, a form of insurance onceso universally disparaged that it nearly promoted an act of Congress banishingthem.
The rationale for theHMO revival is simple enough: costs on the federal marketplace are skyrocketingand insurance companies are acting to get them under control.
