Public health insurance exchange enrollment expected to grow in 2016

You can’t spin that the President’s namesake legacy failed to deliver on its most basic promise and instead touched off myriad unintended consequences from the loss of healthcare coverage to changes in our labor market that has left Americans workers worse off. How many part-time workers would rather clock more than 30 hours, but are limited to 29 hours or less just so that their employer can afford to keep them? Yet, the data do not indicate any significant such shift occurring during 2014.

“I think it has to do more with the allocation of the uninsured than how many are going remain uninsured”, said Tim Jost, a prominent supporter for the healthcare law and a professor at Washington and Lee University. It is unclear if even 2016’s tougher tax fines – $695 or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is greater – will spur the remaining eligible uninsured to sign up in large numbers.

Bernie Sanders was caught dancing backstage of Ellen DeGeneres’ show.

The subsidies they received to help them purchase exchange coverage under the ACA were cut back or eliminated because the federal government could not verify their incomes or determined their incomes exceeded certain thresholds for the subsidies (California Healthline, 10/13). Not surprisingly, Medicaid enrollment growth differed sharply between those states that adopted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion and those that did not.

Attrition on the health insurance exchange has been a factor. Both Cannon and Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs, said the agency may again be “lowballing” the figure to look more successful once the signup period has concluded.

But Burwell said her administration will takeaim especially at Texas and a handful of other states, tryingto reduce by 25 percent the number of uninsured people who are eligible for tax subsidies.

The companies including Shell, BP and Alcoa say want all countries to do their fair share.

Open enrollment for next year starts on November 1 and ends on January 31, 2016. But a few of those people will not make their first month’s premium payments, and others who get officially enrolled will end up leaving their plans during the course of the year.

The administration said the new target of 10 million signed up for the law’s private plans includes mainly customers renewing their coverage from this year, but also 3 million to 4 million people who are now uninsured. “It’s a strong, realistic goal”, she said. “Our goal is to make sure that we create a sustainable product that offers value and access to affordable health care for as many Texans as possible”. According to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates, about 10.5 million uninsured people are eligible to buy a health plan on the exchange, and they are proving more hard to reach than those who bought coverage early on.