08/31/2016 / By hoaxnews
One of the assets Hillary Clinton has at her disposal as the 2016 campaign hits the home stretch is that she’s supported by a fairly popular incumbent president. Granted, most politicians are popular compared to Clinton and Donald Trump, but President Obama’s popularity — at or above 50 percent in 17 of the last 20 weeks of Gallup surveys — means that she can position herself as his heir in a way that appeals to enough people to make up a majority of voters.
Article by Phillip Bump
But there’s a risk to that strategy. Obama’s signature accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare), is having the roughest yearof its existence. Expectations that coverage prices will increase substantially in 2017 and a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing that the number of plans available to enrollees has fallen in much of the country are just the latest pieces of bad news for the ACA. There’s a link between the price increases and the number of insurers, of course, but the drop in options is also a function of big-name insurers, like Aetna, declining to participate in the program. (Aetna’s withdrawal is not without its own political element.)
The Kaiser Family Foundation made maps comparing the number of plans available in each county next year (per its estimates) with the state of health-care options this year. Gray counties are places with three or more plan options. The red county on the 2017 map is Pinal County, Ariz., where KFF estimates no insurers are currently planning to participate in the exchange.
It’s hard to predict how this might affect users. Cost increases are ameliorated by the government’s subsidizing of exchange plans in many cases, and not everyone who needs coverage will rush to enroll in a new plan before Election Day. But if we compare the drop in the number of insurers in states (using a calculus explained below) with how close the voting was in those states in 2012, there’s a cluster of changes in states where polling suggests a close race between Trump and Clinton.
Included in the states with big changes are Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina — three states where the race is still relatively close and which Donald Trump very much needs to hold. (Utah actually improved its coverage, according to KFF’s data, but only slightly. It is shown as zero above.) There’s not a close correlation between states that were close four years ago and the change in coverage, mind you, but the problem is more widespread in states that were closer.
There won’t be a lot of people who vote on the issue of declining Obamacare insurers specifically. It will be fewer than the number who will be directly frustrated by that decline. But the perception of a program that is struggling in particular states may have a broader effect. Clinton’s hope to leverage Obama’s successes on behalf of her own candidacy may take a hit, though, if his signature accomplishment presents itself to voters as something of a frustration.
Read more at washingtonpost.com
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free market, insurance, obamacare, socialism
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