ObamaCare turns eight years old today. Some opponents had hoped to mark the occasion by giving supporters the birthday gift they’ve always wanted: a GOP‐sponsored bailout of ObamaCare‐participating private insurance companies. Fortunately, a dispute over subsidies for abortion providers killed what could have been the first of many GOP ObamaCare bailouts.
ObamaCare premiums have been skyrocketing. All indications are this will continue in 2019, with insurers announcing premium increases up to 32 percent or more just before this year’s mid‐term elections. Some Republicans fear voters will punish them for the effects of a law every Republican opposed and most still want to repeal.
Senate health committee chairman Lamar Alexander (R‑TN), Sen. Susan Collins (R‑ME), and House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman Greg Walden (R‑OR) hope to avert calamity by expanding on a proven failure. For months, they have been pushing legislation that would resurrect ObamaCare’s expired “reinsurance” program with $30 billion of new funding.
ObamaCare’s architects knew the law’s preexisting‐conditions provisions would effectively destroy the individual health insurance market. They added the reinsurance program in an attempt to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
ObamaCare’s preexisting‐conditions provisions both increase health‐insurance premiums and reduce health‐insurance quality. They achieve the former, first, by requiring insurers to cover patients with uninsurable preexisting conditions, and again by unleashing adverse selection. Those factors in turn reduce quality by literally punishing insurers who offer high‐quality coverage for the sick.
From 2014 until it expired at the end of 2016, ObamaCare’s reinsurance program gave participating insurers extra taxpayer subsidies to cover the claims of high‐cost patients whom its preexisting‐conditions provisions require them to cover at a loss. The extra subsidies were supposed to reduce premiums, and prevent a race to the bottom fueled by ObamaCare’s penalties on quality coverage.
If ObamaCare’s reinsurance program was supposed to keep premiums from skyrocketing, it was an utter failure. Premiums increased 18–25 percent per year from 2013 through 2016, well above the trend of 3–4 percent from 2008 to 2013. By 2017, premiums had doubled—a cumulative increase of 99 percent or 105 percent, depending on the source—from pre‐ObamaCare levels. ObamaCare’s preexisting‐conditions provisions were the driving force behind these premium increases.