◼ Though a lot of uncertainty surrounds the health care world in 2014, there are three basic scenarios. - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein
Under one scenario, Obamacare overcomes its early troubles and turns into a smashing success, extending insurance to millions of Americans while causing little or no disruption to the vast majority of citizens. In this unlikely set of circumstances, the Republican policy response to Obamacare is likely to be quite modest.
Under a second scenario, Obamacare would end up ironing out some of its early wrinkles, but would still leave a lot of people complaining about poor access to doctors and hospitals, rising costs and too few choices. This could cause some Republicans to concede to keeping the law’s exchanges, but deregulating them to make it easier for individuals to purchase less comprehensive health insurance that’s cheaper or covers a wider network of providers. Or to propose alternatives to covering individuals with pre-existing conditions as well as scrapping the individual mandate.
Under a third scenario, individual insurance markets would collapse due to a failure to attract a critical mass of young and healthy consumers and Americans would be rebelling against reduced access as insurers pare provider networks. In such a case, Republicans are unlikely to abandon their efforts to repeal the law.
By this time next year, we will know which scenario played out.
◼ CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) claims December enrollment surge, leaves key questions unanswered - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein
...the announcement, which came in the form of a blog post from CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner, left many key questions unanswered.
To start, the figure doesn't reveal how many people actually paid for health plans as of Dec. 24. Though payment is what typically makes enrollment official, up to this point, CMS has counted people as being "enrolled" if they merely went through the process of picking a health care plan.
Additionally, CMS still hasn't provided a demographic breakdown of those who have signed up for insurance through the exchange, which is a key metric for measuring the success of Obamacare, because the exchanges need a critical mass of young and healthy individuals to offset the cost of covering older and sicker enrollees and those with pre-existing conditions.
