Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Democrats Talking Down Obamacare

It appears that analysts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) have taken up weightlifting in recent weeks, as their health-care team on Monday released a report that represented little more than an attempt to move the Obamacare goalposts. Released ahead of this morning’s start of the 2018 open enrollment period, the “analysis” claimed that, but for the Trump administration’s “sabotage” of Obamacare, enrollment in insurance exchanges would—wait for it—remain unchanged from current year levels.

So in CAP’s view, any decline in exchange enrollment lies entirely at Trump’s feet, but any increase in enrollment comes despite Trump, not because of him. (Funny that.) CAP demonstrated its complete confidence in the effect of Trump’s “sabotage” by failing to make any specific estimate or prediction about how much enrollment would decline due to the president’s actions. The paper discussed Obamacare, but its soft bigotry of low expectations—both for the exchanges and the accuracy of CAP’s own predictions—sounded straight out of the debate on No Child Left Behind.

Their Logic Says Obama Sabotaged His Own Program

But the decision to shorten the open enrollment period was first made by none other than those infamous “saboteurs” Barack Obama and Obama official Andy Slavitt. In February 2016, they announced that open enrollment in 2019 would range from November 1 to December 15. Upon taking office earlier this year, the Trump administration decided to implement this change a year ahead of time, due in part to the ways in which individuals were “gaming the system”—using the long open enrollment period and readily available special enrollment periods to sign up for coverage only after developing costly medical conditions.

A change? Sure. Sabotage? Only if you think Obama and Slavitt want to dismantle Obamacare.

Then there’s the question of funding for enrollment and outreach, which the Trump administration reduced from $100 million to $10 million. As with all organizations that believe beneficence lies solely through government, CAP claims private efforts “cannot fully make up for the wealth of information that only the government has for outreach, as well as the planning and funding that HHS dedicated to the program in past years.”

So maybe, just maybe, Hillary Clinton could cut short her walks in the woods, and raise money for Obamacare instead of hawking her own books. Who knows—maybe noted clean-energy advocate Tom Steyer will stop tilting at windmills, and run ads supporting Obamacare instead of Trump’s impeachment. Or Clinton could simply open up her checkbook and single-handedly replenish the outreach budget herself, given that she and her husband made $153 million giving speeches over their careers—a figure which puts both the Clintons’ largesse, and the outreach “cuts,” in perspective.

Regardless, having seen their profits double under the last administration, health insurers don’t need taxpayers funding ads encouraging people to buy their products. They have $15 billion in profits from 2015 to do that themselves. (With that much money, they could even reprise Andy Griffith’s ads promoting Obamacare.)

Is It Sabotage to Increase Health Coverage?

In the final category of “sabotage” comes the Trump administration’s decision to cancel cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers—payments that Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled unconstitutional nearly 18 months ago. CAP claims this decision will raise premiums for the 2018 plan year. But the decision will also lead to greater spending on insurance subsidies, and more individuals with health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office—outcomes CAP would ordinarily support, but somehow “forgot” to mention in its report.

If the states are so concerned that people will be scared away from the exchanges by the thought of higher premiums, perhaps they should stop yelling about higher premiums. With open enrollment just days away, perhaps the states should focus instead on communicating the message that they have devised a response to the CSR payment termination that will prevent harm to the large majority of people while in fact allowing millions of lower-income people to get a better deal on health insurance in 2018. [Emphasis mine.]

While out on the campaign trail, Obama famously told crowds: “Don’t boo—vote.” Perhaps Obamacare supporters should take the eponym’s advice, and spend less time over the next few weeks whining about “sabotage” over open enrollment and more time actually working to enroll people. And maybe, just maybe, all the Washington elites up in arms about President Trump’s “sabotage” of the law could take a truly radical step, and sign up for Obamacare coverage themselves.

This post was originally published at The Federalist.