Health Insurance Politics in The USA

Over the last year, as well as preceding years before this we have seen a steady increase in premiums if you have had health insurance. Just over 3.2 million Americans in fact have lost their coverage or simply been outpriced from it to be able to afford making their premium payments. As the GOP continues its efforts to undercut and repeal Obamacare, you can expect that trend to continue. Now to end the 2017 calendar year we didn’t see an uninsured spike like months previously, which was good news. We are finding out however, that roughly over 12% of adults nationwide now lack the adequate health coverage for themselves.

Now we haven’t kept a close eye on who has or hasn’t had health insurance over the years. We started tracking such statistics around the recession in 2008. And 2017 has shown the sharpest decline in people being insured since 2008. Now like we said earlier in our post, over 12% of American adults are without health insurance those include mostly adults under the age of 25, African Americans, Hispanics and those with low- income due to the simple fact they are outpriced. The drops in coverage would have you believe that they go hand in hand with this being the first year in which Americans were fully required to have health insurance or be forced to pay the tax penalty. It was the first year in which coverage from individual health plans sold on Obamacare marketplace was available. The uninsured rate prior to Obamacare going on sale for the 2014 calendar year was around 18% for adults. When Obamacare took effect in January 2014 we saw uninsured rates fall down to 13.4%. Fast forward to the end of 2016 and we were all the way down to 10.9%. Over the last 3 years since 2014, about 20 million people gained health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act. But that wasn’t limited to just plans on the exchange but also expanded Medicaid benefits in most states to low income people. As Trump was sworn into office people started to become uninsured again. His administration continuously pulled back on promoting anything to do with Obamacare, publicly talking down about it on a consistent basis. They are in ongoing efforts to displace and repeal everything put in place by Obamacare. Whether it is for the better or worse remains to be seen as of now. The repeal efforts have failed thus far, but have many worried about what penalties may or may not lie ahead along with how much more will their premiums increase? So many are dropping their policies, due to the rising cost and uncertainty of what the future holds.

Another main reason why we have seen the shortage in health care policy’s is due to the fact many major health insurers stopped selling Obamacare on the exchange which resulted in few options for individuals and increased premiums due to supply and demand. All in all we can expect more people to lose their coverage due to the tax bill recently passed by congress which has gutted Obamacare and is estimating another 13 million or so people will potentially become uninsured over the next decade. Although some analyst project it to be far less than that. Make sure you exhaust all measures when shopping for coverage for yourself and your family. Do your due diligence and research what options and plans may be best for you.