On February 23, 2018, "The Editors," of "BloomberView," (directing readers to David Shipley), give a good example of the inadequacy of knee-jerk partisanship reporting. In their article, "A New Way to Wreck Obamacare," the authors express an opinion based on what are best incomplete half-truths, which hopelessly undermine their credibility, but worse seem intent on misleading their audience, favoring partisanship over consumer interests.
Here's what they're assertinng: As you can tell from the title, it's another attack on President Trump and another effort to preserve the false narrative of Obamacare.
In describing the Trump Administration's move to "expand the availability of so-called short-term health insurance, the BloombergView authors attack the policies as, 1)not short term , 2) as policies that will drive up premiums and then the only purely opinion claim, 3), that the policy "undermines" Obamacare's "worthy ambition to see that all Americans can get decent health insurance."
BloombergView's "not short-term insurance" statement is nonsensical if you know what the OBAMA Administration did in 2016 where SIX YEARS after the enactment of Obamacare it REDEFINED what short-term health insurance was as UNDER three months and non-renewable. Obama's reason? Because healthy people didn't WANT to pay for Obamacare and sought alternatives and short-term plans were a choice. Under OBAMA, in 2016, CMS told us this:
"Some issuers are now offering short-term limited duration plans to consumers as their primary form of health coverage for periods that last nearly 12 months, allowing them to target ONLY THE HEALTHIEST CONSUMERS while avoiding consumer protections. As highlighted in recent press accounts, BY KEEPING THESE CONSUMERS OUT OF THE ACA single risk pool, such abuses of limited duration coverage increase costs for everyone else, and they could have a greater impact over time if allowed to become more widespread." [caps added for emphasis]
This was part of Obama's deal with INSURANCE companies, the individual mandate, that AHIP, the insurance lobby demanded in exchange to help Obama fulfill his campaign promise of "no exclusion for preexisting conditions." It's very clear in AHIP's 2008 lobbyist plan for the government: "Health Plans Propose Guaranteed Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions and Individual Coverage Mandate."
The deal from insurers: "We'll give you coverage, you guarantee enrollees with a governmental partnership with insurers requiring people to purchase our product…the individual mandate."
But even with this partnership between the government and the consumer financial product sellers of insurance, insurance companies were dissatisfied, complaining that they STILL weren't getting enough healthy people (who wouldn't need or use their product) to balance out them having to actually provide something for their premium payments to other customers, so they went back to their partner, the Obama Administration, for additional means of getting at those consumer dollars.
The Obama Administration's 2016 change to the definition of short-term health insurance to screw healthy consumers out of cheaper options enacted by CMS was not the first time the Obama Administration chose a "Screw you," to consumers to satisfy their insurance company partners.
In 2014, in King v. Burwell the Obama government went to the Supreme Court and won the right to FORCE a consumer to take government premium assistance payments in order to stay "required" to purchase Obamacare.
In 2015, the Obama government tried to force more young-healthies into SILVER plans, again trying to give away federal money for premium assistance, so that young-healthy consumers would be less likely to choose the cheaper Bronze plans, which is what they'd been doing all along as explained by the CBO:
“…more people will forgo those subsidies by choosing to enroll in a bronze plan instead of a silver plan…the agencies expect that some people purchasing coverage through exchanges solely to comply with the individual mandate will be focused on minimizing their premium payments and thus will continue to choose bronze plans.’”(CBO, Pub. 49892, page 13).
So, naturally, that year, the Obama Administration, eager to keep their partner health insurance companies happy went along with much greater increases in the cost of Bronze plans than increases in the cost of Silver plans for the 2016 benefits year hoping to force consumers into a silver-plan choice. As (ironically) reported in BloombergView on November 3, 2015, by Megan McArdle, “Cost of Cheapest Obamacare Plans Soaring,” there was a 7.5 percent increase for the silver plan and a 13 percent increase for the bronze plan.
As for the editors' second assertion, it's apparent that insurance companies were and continue to raise rates as a logically foreseeable consequence of the forced purchase of a consumer financial product and that Obamacare NEVER prevented rate increases except for the usual ways of getting cheaper insurance, worse coverage or higher deductibles, copays and coinsurance. Naturally, Obamacare made matters worse by also PAYING OFF insurers with its temporary reinsurance and risk corridors provisions making sure that Obamacare insurance companies didn't lose money, which EXPIRED for the 2017 year and not only resulted in a mass exodus of insurance companies from exchanges but fulfilled the Obama government's 2015 prediction that premiums would go up:
For the years 2016-2018 the cost of silver plans on the exchanges is expected to rise “…at an average rate of 8.5 percent per year… for two reasons: REINSURANCE PAYMENTS THAT THE GOVERNMENT MAKES TO INSURANCE PLANS whose enrollees incur particularly high costs for medical care WILL BE PHASED OUT over the next two years, placing upward pressure on exchange premiums [AND] PLANS INITIALLY OFFERED THROUGH THE EXCHANGE APPEARED TO HAVE, in general, lower payment rates for providers, NARROWER NETWORKS of providers, and TIGHTER MANAGE OF THEIR SUBSCRIBERS' USE OF HEALTH CARE than do employment-based plans. CBO and JCT anticipate that many plans will not be able to sustain such low provider payment rates or such narrow networks over the next few years, placing upward pressure on exchange premiums.” (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 22). [caps added]
So, the editors are exactly backwards, the proliferation of short-term insurance plans was CAUSED BY Obamacare's premium increases, not the CAUSE OF premium increases.
Finally, with their comment that the Trump Administration "can make this change without getting a law passed," yeah, that's true, just like Obama's administration changed the definition of and availability of short-term health insurance after SIX years of the failure of Obamacare through CMS. That was and is a government power and option.
