The future of Obamacare is uncertain, to say the least.
President-elect Donald Trump has consistently called to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act throughout his campaign, but, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, many pundits see this as being a catch-22 for the incoming administration.
America’s healthcare system is already a global outlier (in a bad way), with disproportionate amounts of money being spent for very little return on life expectancy. For that reason, many people see the additional coverage of 20 million new people through Obamacare as a crucial step forward.
However, this new coverage hasn’t come without major challenges. Obamacare is plagued by soaring premiums, insurers leaving the program, and coverage monopolies in certain states. This puts America’s healthcare at an inflection point, and no one really seems to know how to solve it.
THE OBAMACARE DILEMMA
The following infographic from Healthgrad sums up the most recent metrics on Obamacare, as well as showing the double and triple digit rises in premiums that some states are facing.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
As the infographic notes, the cost of healthcare has continued to escalate year after year, outpacing both inflation and wage growth. Obamacare has not been immune from this trend, and premiums are now being hiked because of low enrollment, mispriced plans, a dwindling pool of insurers, decreased competition in exchanges, and sicker patients than expected.
Despite only 25% of Americans supporting the outright repeal of Obamacare, it’s looking more and more likely that the healthcare system of tomorrow won’t look quite like it does today.
THE POST-OBAMACARE ERA
Right now, nobody knows quite what the future holds for U.S. healthcare.
Repealing or replacing Obamacare is fraught with at least six major issues, but perhaps the most significant one is a lack of decisiveness within the Republican party itself. What would Obamacare be replaced with, and how would that change be implemented?
Interestingly, there are at least seven Republican plans that have been tabled to replace Obamacare. Within that group, two of the more prominent ones come from Georgia Rep. Tom Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Tom Price, who is Trump’s pick as the incoming secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has already published his consumer-driven healthcare model, and it already exists in legal language. In additional, Paul Ryan released his own proposal in the form of the A Better Way plan earlier this year, which also touches on other issues such as poverty, national security, and the economy.
Despite the number of options, the problem is that no one can agree on a particular solution. The party is heavily divided, and Trump is already receiving heavy blowback from the Tea Party faction for telegraphing potential delays in repealing or replacing the act.