ACA Insurance Companies Hurt By Employers Not Dropping Coverage

Dean Baker makes another good point about the misleading reporting that is going on relative to insurance companies dropping out of Obamacare. The standard trope is that not enough healthy, young people are signing up and that this is making it harder for the insurance companies to make money. While that statement may technically be correct, the stated or unstated reason for this in most of the articles is that these people are just opting to go without insurance. As Baker points out, whether they are young or not is irrelevant. In fact, insurance companies make more from the healthy, older people who sign up. But, when you look at the actual numbers, there are many more uninsured people signing up for Obamacare then was originally anticipated. In fact, it is estimated there are about 4 million more people insured at the beginning of this year then was originally predicted. So if the number of uninsured has dropped even below what was predicted, how can there not be enough enrollees for the insurance companies to make money? The answer is that far fewer employers gave up their coverage and moved their employees to Obamacare. It is the lack of those employee-covered individuals to move to the exchanges that has put pressure on insurance companies. It might be useful if the reporting could focus on why employers have been so loathe to give up their coverage rather than spinning fairy tales about missing young, healthy workers.