Assessment of Affordable Care Act

Kaiser Health News published a piece on the near-term outlook for the Affordable Care Act. Its assessment seems reasonably positive ("insurers are on track to be profitable and the market appears to be stabilizing in the country overall"), although it notes that there are markets that are "fragile." Of course, the related headlines dominating the news tend to be about insurers that are retreating from the exchanges because of losses and how a number of counties have been left without options (here's a map of the number of options each county is expected to have in 2018) . Also of note is that 83% of people buying their own coverage on the exchanges receive subsidies.

The piece calls out three actions that the government can undertake to undermine the health of the markets, all of which appear to have been threatened: weakening the individual mandate, scaling back on efforts to engage the consumers to sign up, and stopping the cost-sharing subsidies. It's too early to tell whether the health insurance exchanges will survive.