August 24, 2016
Is Obamacare failing?
Three years ago, health economists believed Obamacare’s soon-to-launch marketplaces would grow to replace much of America’s fractured, complex, employer-based health insurance system.
Predictions for the employer-sponsored insurance system’s collapse ran rampant. The question around companies shifting workers to the new public marketplaces was often framed not as if but when. University of Pennsylvania’s Zeke Emanuel pegged it at 2025. MIT’s Jonathan Gruber estimated 2050.
These days, you don’t hear those predictions anymore.
"It's important to step back and think about what would be happening right now if there was no Affordable Care Act," says IHPI member Nick Bagley, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School, whose work focuses on the Affordable Care Act. "Premiums would be much higher now than they are under any kind of reasonable estimate."
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