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 Battling a barrage of negative headlines about rising health
insurance premiums and shrinking doctor networks for people
participating in the program, Obama is urging more young, uninsured
people to sign up for the subsidized insurance plans offered under
the law.
He also wants to encourage lawmakers to create a government-run
health insurance option to help U.S. states where there is little or
no competition among private insurers.
"That added competition in all 50 states would, we believe, have the
effect of further challenging private health insurance companies to
improve their offerings and reduce their prices," White House
spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday.
Obama will speak about Obamacare in Miami before heading to a rally
for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 8
presidential election, who has said she would add a public option
and expand tax incentives for healthcare costs. Republican Donald
Trump has pledged to repeal and replace the law.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law
by Obama in March 2010. It created online exchanges, which opened in
2014, where consumers can shop for individual health insurance and
receive income-based subsidies.
Republicans who control Congress have bitterly fought the program,
saying it creates unwarranted government intervention in personal
healthcare and private industry.
The government forecasts 13.8 million people will sign up for
Obamacare plans in 2017, up 1.1 million from 2016.
There are 10.7 million uninsured people who are eligible for the
exchanges but have not enrolled, and about 40 percent of those are
young, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said on
Wednesday.
Nationwide, not enough young and healthy people have signed up to
provide a revenue stream that offsets the costs of covering members
with serious illnesses.
As a result, several big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc,
Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, are pulling out of the online marketplaces
selling the subsidized plans, citing bigger than expected financial
losses.
Monthly premium prices have climbed, which further discourages some
people from signing up.
"Next year will tell whether those are growing pains, or they are
more serious issues," Drew Altman, chief executive of the Kaiser
Family Foundation, said in an interview.
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Analysis conducted by the nonpartisan foundation suggests at least
16 million people need to enroll before the online Obamacare
insurance marketplaces stabilize.
Obama credits the Affordable Care Act, one of his main legislative
achievements, with reducing the number of uninsured Americans from
49 million in 2010 to 29 million in 2015, according to an August
article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Much of the decline is due to the law's provision allowing states to
expand Medicaid health coverage for the poor.
The law also prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage to
Americans if they already had medical problems, and allowed parents
to keep children insured on their health plans until age 26.
Some health policy experts on both the political left and right say
Congress may be more receptive to bipartisan efforts to fix the
Affordable Care Act after its creator leaves office. Some Republican
governors who refused to expand Medicaid may also be more willing to
do so after the election.
"I think the piece of Obamacare that people don't like is Obama,"
Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's former Health and Human Services
secretary who oversaw the program's launch, said in an interview.
"This has become a very personal battle about this president, which
is I think really unfortunate."
(Additional reporting by Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by
Matthew Lewis)
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