Health Reform: The need for an overhaul of ObamaCare just got more acute, as a new survey shows that satisfaction rates among those enrolled in ObamaCare plans has taken a steep nose-dive this year amid premium hikes and reduced choices.
The new coverage of ObamaCare these days has been all about protests against repeal and the alleged increase in public support for the law.
But a survey of actual ObamaCare customers released this week paints an entirely different picture.
It found that just 22% of the 44,200 ObamaCare enrollees polled rate their health plan as good to excellent. That's down from 77% who gave their ObamaCare plans high marks last year.
The reason for the sharp decline was higher premiums, worse service and lack of choice. The survey, conducted by Black Book Market Research, found that 96% reported a decline in customer service support, 90% noted premium increases, 80% said their plans had narrower provider networks, and 77% said their plans' benefits had been trimmed. Nearly two-thirds (61%) complained about lack of competitors in their market.
In other words, the collapse of competition in the ObamaCare exchanges — which left five states and a third of U.S. counties with only one ObamaCare insurer — has led to the rapid deterioration in quality.
Black Book managing partner Douglas Brown says that the remaining plans "failed to congruently ramp up member services support to process claims, respond to enrollment issues, answer provider questions, denials, authorizations, and payment."
None of this, mind you, has anything to do with Republican calls to repeal ObamaCare, since insurers announced their massive rate hikes and their plans to abandon ObamaCare long before the November elections.
Meanwhile, lopsided enrollment in the exchanges means that ObamaCare is heading inexorably toward collapse, notes health insurance expert Robert Laszewski, who notes that"ObamaCare was self-destructing the day before Donald Trump was elected."
Laszewski writes that while ObamaCare continues to be a good bargain for those who get the maximum subsidies, enrollment levels collapse as soon as the subsidies start tapering off.
So, while 81% of those who make between 100% and 150% of the poverty level had enrolled last year, only 30% of those with incomes between 150% and 400% above the poverty line did. That means outside of the lowest income group, only the sickest people are buying ObamaCare in these other income brackets. (See chart.)
"The exchange enrollment in these brackets never approached a sustainable level," Laszewski explains.
He also notes that health plans report that enrollment in individual insurance plans that are sold outside the exchanges — which aren't eligible for any subsidies — "has shrunk between 15% and 35%."
"ObamaCare is failing right now," Laszewski concludes. "It is an illusion to think we can keep what we were promised when it launched."
That's precisely what President Trump told the nation in his address to Congress this week, when he said about ObamaCare that "action is not a choice, it is a necessity."
ObamaCare is failing. And this failure is hurting the very people ObamaCare was supposed to help. Those are incontrovertible facts that can't be papered over by raucous protests organized by liberal activist groups.
The question now is whether obstructionist Democrats will let this suffering continue out of spite for Trump and the GOP, or whether they will they join with Republicans on a replacement plan that will actually work.