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The Daily Signal
There’s Broad
Public Support for Congress to Reduce Insurance Costs in Response to
King v. Burwell
Nina Owcharenko
June 02, 2015
As director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, Nina Owcharenko
oversees The Heritage Foundation’s research and policy prescriptions on
such issues as health care reform on the federal and state levels,
Medicare and Medicaid, children’s health and prescription drugs. Read
her research.
By the end of June, the Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision
in King v. Burwell, the case that centers on whether the Obama
administration overstepped its authority when it ordered the Internal
Revenue Service to permit payment of Affordable Care Act subsidies to
individuals enrolled in the federal exchange.
Should the Court rule against the administration, subsidies no longer
would be available to individuals who purchased coverage through
HealthCare.gov, the federal website, in the 34 states that chose not to
establish their own state-based exchanges. It also would mean the
Obamacare employer mandate would be effectively unenforceable and more
individuals would qualify for an “affordability” exemption from the
law’s individual mandate to buy insurance.
As Congress works to respond to the possible ruling, we must remember
the subsidies were intended, in part, to mask the fact the law made
health insurance more expensive. Consequently, any congressional
response should start by exempting individuals, employers and insurance
plans in states without state-run exchanges from the regulations and
mandates that increased health insurance premiums to start with.
A recent poll found broad public support for this approach. The survey
asked respondents the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with
each of several different statements about what Congress should do in
response to the Court’s decision.
The recommendation that registered the highest level of support—73
percent of the voters surveyed—was the idea that “Congress should
remove Obamacare’s mandates and regulations that increase the cost of
health care and disrupted health care coverage for millions of
Americans in the first place.”
A recent study from The Heritage Foundation quantifying the effects of
those policy changes found that removing the most costly Obamacare
insurance regulations could reduce premiums for the lowest-cost plans
by 44 percent for young adults and even 7 percent for pre-retirees.
Moreover, lower premiums not only would benefit those who might lose
their subsidy but also millions of additional Americans whose coverage
was made more expensive by the law’s regulations but did not receive
any offsetting subsidy.
Indeed, in 2014, in the 34 states without their own exchanges, nearly
21 million Americans with individual or small employer group coverage
were subject to the law’s costly new regulation, but only about 4.5
million of them qualified for a subsidy to offset those higher premiums.
Any response to a ruling against the administration in King v. Burwell
should focus first on removing the Affordable Care Act’s benefit
mandates and regulations that have driven up the costs of coverage for
millions of Americans.
Congress will find that to start with making coverage more affordable
not only will be popular but will reduce both the number of individuals
who still need assistance buying coverage and the amount of that
assistance. That would be a win-win-win.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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