Obamacare Stabilized Last Year. Then Trump Screwed Things Up.
By Jordan Weissmann
May 21, 20186:19 PM
One of the big early problems with Obamacare was that insurance companies couldn’t make any money off of it. They charged premiums that were too low, enrolled patients that were sicker than expected, and ended up in the red. Facing these losses, some carriers pulled out of the market entirely, leaving many parts of the country with just a single insurer to choose from, and leading to questions about whether the whole law might unravel.
But new data suggests that, in 2017, the market finally stabilized. For every dollar they collected in premiums last year, insurers paid out 82 cents on medical claims on average, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s down from 96 cents in 2016 and $1.03 in 2015. “After several years, the remaining insurers figured out how to earn a profit in the individual insurance market,” Kaiser Senior Vice President Larry Levitt told me.
continues at slate.com |
