On November 1, open enrollment for the insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began, and much of the nation found themselves facing dramatic health insurance price increases for many consumer plans in the ACA exchanges. In a recent Washington Post article, reporter Jonnelle Marte argues, “Monthly insurance premiums for popular plans on HealthCare.gov are rising by 25 percent on average next year, according to government data. But the increases will be more dramatic in certain parts of the country, especially for consumers not receiving subsidies, the numbers show.”
According to a report from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the average 27-year-old buying the second-lowest-priced Obamacare “Silver Plan” in Alabama, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee is experiencing a 40 percent or more increase in monthly premiums compared to last year’s prices. The Silver tier is the second-most affordable plan in the exchange. According to HHS, it is “used to determine the size of the federal subsidy consumers can receive to lower their monthly premium costs.”
Health insurance consumers in the individual market can expect to see fewer choices and higher premiums in 2017. Edmund Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy and markets at The Heritage Foundation, recently wrote in The Daily Signal that “more than three-fifths of the states (33 in total) will have fewer insurers offering coverage on the Obamacare exchanges than they did in 2016. Arizona and Texas are each losing six insurers, while two other states, Kentucky and Ohio, are losing four each. Only one state, Virginia, will have more exchange insurers next year than this year.” Haislmaier also reports, “Five states—Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wyoming—will have only one insurer offering exchange coverage in 2017, while another 13 states will have only two.”
Another problem facing many Americans is the rising cost of penalties those without insurance will have to pay when they file their 2016 tax returns. According to a recent USA Today article by University of Southern California Fellow Frank Gluck, 2017 tax penalties will be at their maximum for those who weren’t insured in 2016. Gluck mentions that the uninsured “will have the highest penalties at tax time in April: $695 per adult or a maximum of $2,085 per family or 2.5% of adjusted gross income, whatever’s higher.”
More than 20 million people declined to buy ACA-compliant health insurance plans in 2014 and most have legitimate reasons for rejecting Obamacare. Michael Hamilton, Heartland Institute research fellow and the managing editor of Health Care News, argued in a recent Consumer Power Report that if HHS wants more people to obtain access to high-quality health care and coverage, “ACA proponents should be calling for expanded exemptions from fines instead of jockeying for harsher fines against people who decide Obamacare insurance and subsidies offer poor value.”
What We’re Working On
Budget & Tax
Research & Commentary: Pennsylvania’s High Vaping Tax Needs to Go
In July 2016, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed a $1.3 billion tax increase that included a 40 percent tax on the wholesale price of electronic cigarettes. The new tax has had a chilling effect on small business in the state. In this Research & Commentary, Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Glans discusses Pennsylvania’s onerous vaping tax and the need for reform. “Targeted taxes such as those on vapor products disproportionately harm low-income taxpayers while punishing local businesses. Pennsylvania’s current vaping tax has already begun harming small businesses and consumers, costing hundreds of jobs and making a less harmful alternative to smoking less attractive,” Glans wrote. Read more
Education
More Michigan Students are Using School Choice Programs, Study Finds
In this story from School Reform News, Kenneth Artz, a news reporter for The Heartland Institute, analyzes a study by MLive showing almost 23 percent of Michigan students in the public school system now use a public school choice option. This is up from 16 percent in 2009. Thirteen percent of these students crossed district lines to attend a different public school, while another 10 percent attend a charter school, reported Artz. Read more
Energy & Environment
Research & Commentary: Carbon Tax is Not a Win-Win
A new study by the Cato Institute argues the “popular narrative” suggesting carbon-dioxide tax swaps are a win-win is “dubious” and that the economic analysis of a U.S. carbon-dioxide tax “in theory and in practice … [is] weaker than its most vocal supporters have led the public to believe.” The study examines the carbon-dioxide taxes in effect in Australia and British Columbia, and the authors conclude, “[T]he real-world experiences of carbon taxes in Australia and British Columbia, Canada, cast serious doubt on the promises of a market-friendly carbon tax in the United States.” In this Research & Commentary, Policy Analyst Tim Benson examines the study and concludes a carbon tax, whether state-issued or federal, would be environmentally meaningless. Benson says carbon taxes cause virtually everything to be more expensive for working Americans, making them economically punitive. Read more
Health Care
Research & Commentary: Emergency Room Visits Grow Under Expanded Medicaid
A new study released in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) used data from the State of Oregon’s Medicaid experiment to determine the effect Medicaid expansion has had on the number of visits patients have made to emergency rooms. The Oregon program implemented a limited expansion of Medicaid for lower-income non-disabled adults using a lottery system. Because the government assigned spots in the program randomly, researchers say the experiment is a great model to analyze and extrapolate broader conclusions from.
In this Research & Commentary, Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Glans examines the effect of Medicaid expansion on patient use of emergency rooms. “One of the many goals of ACA was to lessen the burden of uninsured patients on the nation’s emergency rooms, but ACA attacked the wrong problem, forcing states to expand their failed Medicaid systems to cover more people,” wrote Glans. Read more
From Our Free-Market Friends
The Texas Public Policy Foundation Launches Center for Families and Children, Announces Brandon Logan as Director
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) recently announced the opening of the Center for Families and Children. The purpose of this new center is to serve the needs of the nearly 30,000 children who are currently under the state’s care in Texas. The center will seek to facilitate community-centered services to support families, to provide alternatives to removal, and to reform Texas’ approach to caring for children who cannot remain safely at home. The center will be led by Brandon Logan. Before joining TPPF, Brandon represented hundreds of children as an attorney in child welfare courts throughout Texas. He is certified as a “child welfare law specialist” by the National Association of Counsel for Children. Read more
Nathan Makla is a former state government relations manager for the Government Relations Department at The Heartland Institute.
