The Obamacare Sink Hole | Citizens Against Government Waste

The Obamacare Sink Hole

The WasteWatcher

On March 29, 2013, editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez drew a cartoon of the United States with a huge sinkhole in the middle of it and the words "Obamacare" spread across its center.  The drawing certainly was foretelling of what Americans could expect from the misnamed Affordable Care Act (ACA).

More than three years later, it seems the Obamacare sink hole is starting to take hold.  Millions of Americans can expect huge premium increases this year and insurers are pulling out of Obamacare exchanges across the county.  The most recent was Aetna when it announced on August 15 that it would no longer provide health insurance in 69 percent of the counties and 11 of the 15 states where it currently participates in Obamacare exchanges.  The New York Times displayed a map on August 20, which shows that in many parts of the country, only one insurer will be participating in an Obamacare exchange.

But there is a county that will have NO insurers participating in Obamacare.  Business Insider reported on August 23, 2016 that “Pinal County, Arizona, right next to Phoenix, was founded in 1875 and is home to roughly 400,000 people.  It's also the county that Obamacare forgot.  After Aetna's announcement that it will roll back 70% of its offerings in public exchanges, Pinal County appears to be the only county in the US with a public exchange but zero insurers offering Affordable Care Act plans in 2017.”

While Blue Cross Blue Shield is still participating in the county, it too plans to pull out of the exchange in 2017.  However, insurers will still offer plans off the Obamacare exchange but that means no taxpayer-provided subsidies and many consumers may not be able to afford their premiums.  Currently, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, people purchasing health insurance on their own, and who are not eligible for subsidies, make up approximately 19 percent of the non-group market.  An additional 12 percent participate in non-ACA compliant plans and also do not receive subsidies.

Meanwhile, there are efforts underway to keep Blue Cross Blue Shield participating in the Pinal County Obamacare exchange or to encourage another insurer to come into the county.

Good luck with that.

The main reason why insurers are leaving Obamacare is because their costs are unsustainable.  As laid out in Citizens Against Government Waste’s August Waste Watcher, Obamacare’s top-heavy, Washington-driven mandates and oppressive regulations are responsible for the high costs.

Many people are beginning to call for a single-payer system to replace Obamacare.  That faux-solution will not drive down costs and it will lead to government rationing.  Single-payer systems do not use free-market principles and always end up costing more than anticipated, which leads to long wait times for care or denial of certain treatments. Government bureaucrats and politicians decide what their country’s citizens will or will not have in single-payer health systems.

The better answer, as CAGW has long promoted, is to design a system in which the individual is in charge of their healthcare dollars, through tax credits.  Americans should have the power to shop around for the kind of healthcare plan they want; not one that is foisted on them by Washington power brokers and bureaucrats.

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