Volume 6: Health Insurance, Part III
Obamacare: The Long War
“I’m not on Obamacare. My health insurance is through the ACA.” – Twitter, various
Almost seven years after its passage, the Affordable Care Act hasn’t become any less controversial. Historically, after they are passed, most pieces of legislation “settle down” into implementation mode as even opponents try to make the law work as well as possible. Not so here – from the day of its passage, its opponents have tried to dismantle the so-called “disaster”, while its proponents have refused to consider going back.
How do we best consider the effects of this complex law? Rather than making value judgments about how our health insurance system should work, let’s judge the ACA by the terms of its debate. What did its supporters predict? What did its opponents predict? Who was right? The debate over what features are present in a strong health insurance system is unlikely to end soon. But this framework should give a more neutral point of view to explain what the ACA’s effects have been.
What did the proponents of the ACA predict?
What did the opponents predict?
How is each side describing the current state of the health insurance system?
What did the proponents of the ACA predict?
Before we dive in, let’s set some ground rules. Most importantly, it would be easy to cherry-pick people on either side making crazy predictions and then shoot them down. Everything here is intended to be representative of the larger debate. For some predictions I’ll use a quote, while others have general statements.
Like my fact-checking compatriots, we’ll also need a consistent set of rulings to “rate” how everybody did. Politifact’s system seems to cover most bases. One clarification – I’ll use “Pants on Fire” only for a deliberate fabrication; an honestly made prediction that didn’t bear out is just “False”. Let’s dive in…
“If you like your plan, you can keep it." - Barack Obama
Might as well get our hands dirty right away. The President should not have made this statement – it was a promise that he had no way to keep. One of the reasons why the ACA was created was that many people with insurance were not really covered. As an extreme case, “mini-meds” were very inexpensive but had annual benefit caps as low as $2,500. Of course, some people “liked” these plans, and they were going to go away.
As discussed in previous Volumes, the ACA created various criteria, without which an insurance plan would be “non-compliant.” A significant percentage of plans on the individual marketplace lacked these conditions, and their policyholders received notification that their plan would be cancelled. While the exact number of people affected isn’t known, a good guess is that 2.5-3 million people received cancellation letters.
The White House seemed genuinely surprised by how many were affected and took action. Existing plans were grandfathered through 2017, although some providers unilaterally canceled their plans sooner (individual market plans were frequently cancelled in the pre-ACA world).
Rating: FALSE. I disagree with Politifact’s “Pants on Fire” because I think the statement was made in good faith.
Approximately 26 million people will gain coverage by 2016. - CBO
In 2012 (following the Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius), the CBO predicted that 26 million additional net persons would be covered due to the ACA. This included:
10 million additional due to Medicaid/CHIP expansion
23 million additional on exchanges
5 million fewer by employers
2 million fewer in nongroup (i.e. individual) market
This would leave an uninsured non-elderly population of 30 million.
To see how this compares with the results, we can refer to the ACA Signups Healthcare Coverage Breakout. The categories don’t agree exactly with the CBO, but to get an idea:
Medicaid/CHIP expansion has added 14 million beneficiaries
Exchanges have added 11 million, but there are also 7 million off-exchange policies
I’m not able to make a good comparison on the nongroup or employer section with the data I have. However, with total uninsured at 29 million, the total change is in line with the CBO prediction.
Rating: TRUE. The mixture is off, but the overall number is dead on. It looks like fewer people than expected left their employer sponsored plan.
“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.” - Barack Obama
With the caveat that it is difficult to know what would have happened without the ACA, and we don’t know what will happen in the future, the evidence is strong that the national debt is and will be smaller because of the ACA.
First, we can look at the CBO’s projection for the law; it showed a significant benefit from the ACA:
Then we can see that future CBO revisions have shown consistent reductions in the cost of the ACA:
Why have ACA costs come in lower than expected? Mostly because the costs of premiums on the exchanges are lower than expected (more on this to follow).
Rating: MOSTLY TRUE. It looks good so far, but the full law has been in effect only 3 years. The prediction stated “in the future”, so let’s be cautious.
What did the opponents predict?
“The bill’s tax hikes are a job killer…individual mandate is a job killer…employer mandate is a job killer.” - John Boehner
An incredibly common prediction about the ACA was that it would “kill jobs”. In an assault on the English language, one of the many attempts to repeal the law was entitled “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” There were some reasons to think the ACA would hurt employment. First, some people who had previously been working primarily to obtain health insurance would willingly drop out of the market now that it became available elsewhere. Second, to avoid the mandate to provide insurance to full-time workers, some companies might reduce employment or move full-time employees to part-time status.
Since the passage of the ACA, there has been job growth every single month; this is a record, 70+ months and growing. In addition, there is no evidence of significant movement of full-time employees to part-time status. This isn’t to claim that the historically strong job growth over the past seven years is because of the ACA. However, Speaker Boehner said that the ACA would “kill jobs” and it hasn’t done so.
Rating: FALSE. There is no way to conclusively prove the ACA’s effect on employment. But you’d think something would have shown up by now if it was a “job killer”.
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel'” - Sarah Palin
I know I promised not to cherry-pick, but the idea that the ACA would lead to the government involvement in individual health care decisions was common among its opponents – this is just the most quotable.
We can dispense with it quickly. This could have been referring to the Independe