Health Insurers' Collapsing Obamacare Consensus

The health insurance industry is undergoing a crisis of consensus on how to respond to the failure of Obamacare. That is the only way to interpret the departure of another large, national carrier, Aetna, from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). This follows UnitedHealth Group’s departure from the industry’s trade group last June.

Read more at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

New Evidence That Obamacare is Working?

Obamacare supporters are excited by a research article suggesting Obamacare is working to increase access to care. In an article published in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers followed up respondents to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (which I’ve discussed previously.)

Yes, in an absolute sense, their access to care improved. According to the Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn, this means “Another Argument From Obamacare Critics Is Starting To Crumble.”

Oh dear. Even Citizen Cohn admits “The picture from the raw data is a little muddled” and “like all academic studies, this one will be subject to scrutiny that, over time, could call its findings into question.” Well, I won’t call them into question, just point out what is obvious from the abstract itself: Obamacare is dong a terrible job increasing access to care.

Health Insurance Consolidation Begins With A Bang

Just last Thursday, I wrote about the forthcoming consolidation in U.S. health insurance. My thesis was that only large, centralized, politically powerful insurers could continue to thrive.

With perfect timing, Humana, Inc., announced on Friday that it was putting itself on the block, and the shares rallied about twenty percent. They continue to climb today.

Read the entire entry at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

Is Obamacare Finally Juicing Healthcare Jobs?

Last week’s employment report showed good growth, and jobs in health care were a big part of it. Total nonfarm payroll increased by 257, 000, of which 38,000 (15 percent) were jobs in health care. Job growth in healthcare was 0.26 percent, month on month, versus only 0.17 percent for nonfarm, non-health jobs.

Read the entire column at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

Post-Obamacare Reform: Will Insurers Be Redeemed?

Robert Pear of the New York Times recently described the “symbiotic” relationship between the Obama Administration and health insurers. It was not always so, but it is now "symbiotic".

This poses quite a challenge for health reform after Obamacare is repealed by the next President in January 2017. Will health insurers resist, focused on consolidating their Obamacare gains, or will they accept the need for real reform? Although not immediately apparent, there is hope that health insurers will be ready to move beyond Obamacare.

Read the entire column at Forbes.

John R. Graham: Shouldn't Healthcare Be Fair?

A new video from the Independent Institute.

Reporting Changes In Uninsured Due To Obamacare: Government Agencies Can Be Clearer

One of the themes of this blog is that the number of uninsured Americans is not decreasing as quickly or surely as Obamacare’s supporters would have us believe. Part of the problem estimating this is a confusing series of releases from federal agencies, which has led to inconsistent interpretation by scholars.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the results of the National Health Insurance Survey (NHIS), which I discussed under the headline “Number of Uninsured Americans Aged 18-64 Down 2 Percentage Points.” What this was referring to was that the percentage of residents in that age group who were uninsured at the time of the interview had dropped from 20.4 percent in 2013 to 18.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014. That’s about 3.8 million people.

However, the proportion who were uninsured for at least part of the last year barely budged from 24.4 percent to 24.3 percent, and the proportion who were uninsured for more than a year dropped by 1.7 percentage points, from 15.7 percent to 14 percent. That’s about 3.2 million people. Obviously, the last group is a subset of the second group. The first group is also a subset of the second group, but it is not clear how to connect the first group and the third group.

It's a big difference, with big policy implications:

Read the entire column at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.

The U.S. Is Losing The Ability To Maintain High Health Spending

One complaint about American health spending is that we spend too much. It usually looks like this: “We spend 17 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. The next most expensive country is Switzerland, which spends 12 percent.” Put that way, it does seem like we are spending too much. However, it invites another question: Is the five percent extra that we spend on health care taking away from other goods and services we need?

The answer to that question is no. But that is changing with Obamacare.e-spending/#ixzz3BmoNnyHk

Read the entire column in The Daily Caller.

Obamacare Vs. America's National Pastime

In case you still doubt that Obamacare’s costly mandates are causing employers to cut workers’ hours, you need to learn what it is doing to the game of baseball.

Last Tuesday’s game between the San Francisco Giants and the Chicago Cubs was marred by a farcical unrolling of the tarp when rain started pouring down.

The reason: A shortage of seasonal workers, who have to be kept under 130 hours per month.

That’s the full-time worker definition under “Obamacare,” which requires employer-provided healthcare benefits for “big businesses” such as a major league team.

Read the entire article at the NCPA Health Policy Blog.