When I first went into business in 1980 providing family group health insurance was an automatic. That was what decent employers did. By 1990 we were informing employees of the cost, including it in their statements of their annual compensation,and giving them "choices" - like charging the difference between parent-child and family coverage, letting people go on their spouse's policy etc. And deductibles and co-pays went up - because we had "choices" - pay more get less, pay a lot more, stay even. Now when costs go up employers blame it on "Obamacare" instead of the insurance company. - gwc
Why the ACA remains unpopular, cont. | xpostfactoid
by Andrew Sprung
Over at the Huffington Post, Jonathan Cohn has teamed up with pollster Mark Blumenthal for a deep dive into why the ACA's approval ratings remain underwater* and why more people continue to say that the law has personally harmed than helped them (though the gap had narrowed. to 22-19 when Kaiser last polled this question in March).
There are two main takeaways: 1) polling results are overwhelmingly partisan, and Republicans are more passionate in their hatred of the law than Democrats are in support of it, and 2) Americans tend to attribute any changes in their health plans -- usually price hikes or coverage cutbacks -- to the ACA. That's especially true of people with employer-sponsored insurance, a third of whom said they'd been hurt by the law.**
While those conclusions are spot-on, and Cohn and Blumenthal provide a nuanced overview of the ACA's effects on various groups, I'd like to throw one sidelight and add a couple of caveats.
First, the sidelight. Noting that the largest category of those who say the law hurt them say it drove their costs up, Cohn and Blumenthal suggest that the perception is not accurate:
There are two main takeaways: 1) polling results are overwhelmingly partisan, and Republicans are more passionate in their hatred of the law than Democrats are in support of it, and 2) Americans tend to attribute any changes in their health plans -- usually price hikes or coverage cutbacks -- to the ACA. That's especially true of people with employer-sponsored insurance, a third of whom said they'd been hurt by the law.**
While those conclusions are spot-on, and Cohn and Blumenthal provide a nuanced overview of the ACA's effects on various groups, I'd like to throw one sidelight and add a couple of caveats.
First, the sidelight. Noting that the largest category of those who say the law hurt them say it drove their costs up, Cohn and Blumenthal suggest that the perception is not accurate:
No comments:
Post a Comment