President Obama’s attempt to hide the cost of health care in the coming year until after the midterm elections will not obscure the financial strain already impacting millions of families, and Obamacare could end up being a decisive issue in the fight to control the next U.S. Congress, according to health-care policy expert Grace-Marie Turner.
In the wake of last year’s disastrous Obamacare roll-out in the weeks leading up to the November elections, the administration quietly postponed the start of enrollment for 2015 until Nov. 15, nearly two weeks after midterm elections that will determine the majority in the U.S. Senate next year.
“It really is quite cynical to have started the re-enrollment date on November 15, when last year they started it on October 1,” Turner said. “They don’t want people to be enrolling and seeing their higher premiums before they head to the polls.”
Despite the administration’s efforts to keep health-care costs off the political radar screen, Turner said the truth is already getting out.
“We’ve already seen premium increases in many states and, unfortunately, many of the swing states,” she said. “You’re seeing double-digit premium increases. In some places, you’re even seeing 10-20 percent rate hikes. Some other states, you’re seeing them level off, but remember this is on a base of an average increase of 41 percent in the individual market last year.”
Premium increases may be a big headache for millions of people in the coming weeks, but Turner said the problems run a lot deeper than that, starting with a huge number of Americans likely to lose their current plans once again.
“Those people who renewed one more year because their plans were grandfathered, that expires in most cases at the end of this year,” she said. “What that means is people are going to start getting cancellation letters. Some of them have already started getting them now. Most of them have to be in the mail by 60 days before the policy cancels, which is right about the time of the elections.”
She said other people will be without coverage because their employers simply won’t be able to afford it.
“Workers are being cut back on their hours so that employers don’t have to pay the fine for not providing health insurance,” Turner said. “We saw Walmart recently saying they’re going to drop health insurance entirely for its part-time workers who work fewer than 30 hours a week. So they can go to the exchanges. Well, it’s going to cost them more with higher deductibles. It’s going to be worse coverage.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Grace-Marie Turner:
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For those finding themselves on new plans or just paying more for the old ones, Turner said the cost increases don’t stop there.
“Many people are finding that their average deductible, the amount of money that they have to spend out of pocket, before insurance even triggers in, is now in the Obama exchanges about $5,000 a year,” she said. “So people are seeing higher deductibles, higher co-payment, higher costs, fewer doctors. And they are not happy.”
Obamacare is not getting much attention in the national media as the midterms loom less than three weeks away, but Turner said that obscures how big of an issue this still is for millions of voters. She said national and international crises may be dominating the headlines, but voters aren’t forgetting how much they have to pay for health insurance under this new law.
“Yes, it is an issue in the elections, in the congressional elections and the senatorial elections,” she said. “I think that we may find that it actually becomes a deciding vote of whether somebody says, ‘Oh, it’s really fine. I voted for it,’ or whether their opponent is saying, ‘I’m going to go back to Washington and we’re going to take care of this because we realize how much harm this law is doing.'”
There is some debate among Republican candidates around the country as to whether full repeal is the way to go if the GOP takes control of the U.S. Senate or whether a piecemeal approach is best.
Turner said the latter is a more shrewd approach.
“They’re going to tackle specific issues. I think you’ll very likely see a repeal of the medical device tax. You’ll see perhaps a relaxation and extension or even repeal of the mandate on employers and on individuals,” she said, explaining that going bit by bit at least has some chance of succeeding while Obama is in office.
“The president’s not going to sign anything anyway for the next two years to repeal the whole law,” she said. “But if you get enough Democrats supporting repeal of specific provisions, he may be forced to sign them as part of bigger legislation or you could get such big margins that you have a veto-proof majority.”
She said GOP control of Congress would give the party an excellent chance to explain and prove to the American people how they would pursue market-based reforms when and if a Republican is elected president in 2016.
