Want some points to argue against “Obamacare is imploding!” rhetoric? The LA Times has an interesting article for you.
Basically, the probability of being in a county with only one insurance option for the exchanges increases significantly if you have a Republican governor. Not including North Carolina that has only had a Democratic governor since January, if you live in a state with a Democratic governor you have a “1.8% probability of only having a singer insurer” in the exchange. If you live in a state with a Republican governor, “there is a 20.7%” chance.
There “two main ways in which Republic governors have been effective in sabotaging Obamacare”:
Refusing to expand Medicaid:
- which pulls many lower-income people out of the exchanges – “people who tend to be less healthy and have higher medical bills on average.”
- It reduces the risk to exchange insurers to have “this higher-cost population” out of the exchanges.
Neglecting to promote Obamacare:
- less health people don’t need to be advertised to, they know they need insurance
- more healthy people need the advertisement to buy into the system and balance out the risk.
- fewer healthy people in the exchanges increases risk and decreases profitability for the insurers.
And thirdly, being a pain to work with doesn’t help:
- Republican governors and insurance commissioners “were often less cooperative with insurance companies”
- Democratic governors cajoled insurers to enter and stay and meet “reasonable regulatory concerns”
Hearseeno 