Concerns about afforability of insurance plans

Kaiser Health News published a piece about the upcoming potential decrease in affordability of health insurance plans. Last year, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act, which subsidized health insurance premiums for plans offered through insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act, reducing those premiums on average by about 23%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, enrollment in such plans increased. Congress has not yet renewed the subsidies, and the current governor of California has proposed using some of its surplus to offset the loss of subsidies for Californians if Congress does not act.

After a cursory reading, one might think this article is about the importance of government subsidies to boost enrollment. However, such efforts seem to ignore the underlying cause of the rising premiums. That is, governments might be willing to spend millions and billions on subsidizing insurance premiums, perhaps without spending corresponding amounts on slowing the rise in healthcare costs. Both efforts might be needed: subsidies for short-term relief and cost management for help ensure that governments (and patients) do not simply keep paying higher and higher amounts that might have been avoided through a more systems-oriented solution.