Obamacare Policy Cancellations: Media Mythology, Republican Spin
The Obamacare cancellation stories have dominated the media for the past two weeks. And it’s easy to understand why. People losing their insurance is a bigger story than people getting insurance for the first time. But how big a story should it be? To answer that, you need to know how many people actually fit these descriptions—and what might have happened to these people if the Affordable Care Act had never become law.
1. People With These Policies Frequently Don’t Like Them: The best estimates suggest that about 12 to 15 million people buy insurance on their own. In other words, they are part of the “non-group” market. The best survey on this subject I’ve seen comes from the Center for Health Research and Transformation. In it, nearly half of all people surveyed rated their non-group coverage “fair or poor.”
The best survey on this subject I’ve seen comes from the Center for Health Research and Transformation. In it, nearly half of all people surveyed rated their non-group coverage “fair or poor.” The proportion of respondents who had the same thing to say about employer coverage, Medicare, or Medicaid was half as high. This isn't particularly surprising, given that the most egregious insurance company abuses—rescinding policies for people who get sick, failing to pay for services that beneficiaries assumed were covered—usually come from the non-group market.
More here: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115625/obamacare-policy-cancellations-media-mythology-republican-spin
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