Critics’ Portrayal of Health Reform Doesn’t Match Reality

As we explained yesterday, many of the benefits that three key House Republican committee chairs claim their health plan will offer are things that health reform already provides — and, in most cases, much more so than their plan likely would. Here’s another problem with their Wall Street Journal op-ed: its portrayal of health reform simply isn’t true. It portrays people “stuck” in health insurance they can’t afford, and paying for benefits they don’t want, just to avoid the penalty for not having coverage. The reality is quite different.

Many people buying their own insurance have more freedom of choice than before health reform. Before health reform, people without job-based coverage had few good options. Many couldn’t buy insurance on their own or faced exorbitant premiums because of pre-existing health conditions or other factors. And enrollees who wanted to switch plans often faced a battery of questions from the insurance company and higher premiums.

Now, people have numerous plan options to choose from and can switch each year to suit their needs, just like people with job-based coverage. Moreover, people who’ve enrolled through the marketplaces give their coverage high marks: seven in ten people surveyed last fall rated their coverage and the quality of their health care as excellent or good.

Coverage is more affordable for most Americans, not less. More than 80 percent of the people enrolling through the marketplaces are eligible for premium subsidies, which reduce premiums in the federal marketplaces by an average of 72 percent. Before health reform, premiums were out of reach for people with modest incomes. Now that insurers have to grant coverage to everyone and charge the same premiums regardless of past medical problems, a market that was closed to many with modest incomes is finally a viable source of health insurance. Recent data show other pocketbook improvements: fewer people skipped needed medical care or had problems paying medical bills as health reform took effect.

Before health reform, many plans lacked benefits that people wanted. Before health reform, many plans in the individual market lacked coverage of maternity care, substance abuse and mental health treatment, and prescription drugs. Health reform requires insurers to include those benefits. It also requires coverage of certain preventive care at no cost, bars annual and lifetime limits on benefits, and caps the amount people pay on deductibles and other cost-sharing charges each year.

It isn’t all about the individual mandate. To be sure, the penalty for not having insurance is a critical part of health reform since it encourages more healthy people to buy coverage. But the mandate isn’t the only reason people would purchase marketplace coverage, as the op-ed claims. The penalty hasn’t even fully phased in, yet numerous surveys show significant — even historic — gains in coverage (see here and here) through the marketplaces, as well as through health reform’s Medicaid expansion.

Those gains reflect the fact that people who are uninsured generally want coverage but either can’t afford it or don’t have coverage through a job. Now, however, health reform offers people a choice of marketplace plans with meaningful benefits and substantial help purchasing them.