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“President Trump’s brazen sabotage of the American healthcare system is leading to skyrocketing premiums and serious pain for hardworking families,” said DCCC Spokesman Tyler Law. “To be clear, House Republicans own this disaster along with the Administration, as they’re giving aid and comfort to President Trump’s sabotage.
“In fact, most House Republicans fought to exacerbate the uncertainty, by failing to pass commonsense, bipartisan improvements to the Affordable Care Act, and they are now failing to stand up to President Trump as he threatens our entire healthcare system. Ultimately, that’s why House Republicans will be held accountable for these rate hikes in the midterms.”
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Study: Trump actions trigger health premium hikes for 2018
AP
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/study-trump-actions-trigger-health-premium-hikes-2018-49129908
The Trump administration’s own actions are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many consumers, a nonpartisan study has found.
The analysis released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that mixed signals from President Donald Trump have created uncertainty “far outside the norm,” leading insurers to seek higher premium increases for 2018 than would otherwise have been the case.
The report comes with Republicans in Congress unable to deliver on their promise to repeal and replace the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Trump, meanwhile, insists lawmakers try again. The president says “Obamacare” is collapsing, but he’s also threatened to give it a shove by stopping billions of dollars in payments to insurers. Some leading Republicans are considering fallback measures to stabilize markets.
[…] About 10 million people who buy policies through HealthCare.gov and state-run markets are potentially affected, as well as another 5 million to 7 million who purchase individual policies on their own.
[…] But on top of that, the researchers found the mixed signals from the administration account for some of the higher charges. Those could increase before enrollment starts Nov. 1.
“The vast majority of companies in states with detailed rate filings have included some language around the uncertainty, so it is likely that more companies will revise their premiums to reflect uncertainty in the absence of clear answers from Congress or the administration,” the report said. Once premiums are set, they’re generally in place for a whole year.
Insurers who assumed that Trump will make good on his threat to stop billions in payments to subsidize copays and deductibles requested additional premium increases ranging from 2 percent to 23 percent, the report found.
Insurers who assumed the IRS under Trump will not enforce unpopular fines on people who remain uninsured requested additional premium increases ranging from 1.2 percent to 20 percent.
“In many cases that means insurers are adding double-digit premium increases on top of what they otherwise would have requested,” said Cynthia Cox, a co-author of the Kaiser report. “In many cases, what we are seeing is an additional increase due to the political uncertainty.”
That doesn’t sound like what Trump promised when he assumed the presidency.
In a Washington Post interview ahead of his inauguration, Trump said, “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.”
“There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it,” he added. “That’s not going to happen with us.”
People covered under Obama’s law “can expect to have great health care,” Trump said at the time. “It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better.”