Trump's DHHS's data proves Obamacare is stable -- not imploding.

[pnwmom]

Despite the GOP's best efforts to kill it. Imagine how it would be doing with a supportive President and Congress.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-trump-administrations-own-data-says-obamacare-isnt-imploding/

President Trump and other Republicans have said repeatedly that one reason they have to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is that the law is failing: Healthy people are abandoning the insurance marketplaces set up by the law, driving up costs and leading yet more people to drop insurance — a so-called “death spiral.” Many health insurance experts, however, have argued that those fears are overblown, and they recently got support from an unlikely source: the Trump administration itself.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, last week released a report about a wonky aspect of the Affordable Care Act related to insurance payments. Tucked away in the report, however, was evidence that the health insurance marketplaces set up by Obamacare were relatively stable in 2016. Contrary to the “death-spiral” narrative, the CMS report found that the mix of healthy and sick people buying insurance on the Obamacare marketplaces in 2016 was surprisingly similar to those who enrolled in 2015.

SNIP

To determine the mix of healthy and sick enrollees for risk-adjustment payments, the federal government assigns risk scores to people based on their age, sex and health diagnosis and then averages the scores for a plan. What CMS found was that those averages were relatively stable in 2016. That’s a good sign for the marketplaces, because stabilizing the mix of healthy and sick people buying on the marketplaces goes a long way toward stabilizing prices. Despite expectations that in the face of rising premiums, healthier enrollees would be less inclined to enroll last year, that doesn’t appear to have been the case.

That doesn’t mean the marketplaces are working for everyone. There are millions of people who don’t qualify for subsidies, face high prices in the private market and likely haven’t enrolled in insurance as a result. That’s a problem that needs solving, but it’s a different problem than the marketplaces being in a death spiral.

[COLGATE4]

1. If these bastard Rethugs in Congress weren't actively sabotaging it

Obamacare would be well on the way to delivering improved health care for millions of Americans. The
'death spiral' is of a piece with the 'death panels' of some years ago - designed to play on the fearful brain(?) of Trump's mouth-breathing followers.