How Obamacare Exchanges Have Decreased Competition Among Insurers
Unsurprisingly, Obamacare has made yet another problem worse—creating a government exchange that is less competitive than the prior individual market.
In 2009, when President Obama was trying to sell his health care reform ideas to Congress, he promised a competitive marketplace, where costs would decrease and quality would increase. He said:
We’ll…[create] a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices. Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage.
But thus far, much like his other promises, this one falls flat on all fronts.
2015 state-level competition. A comparison of the number of insurers selling coverage in the 2015 exchanges with the number of insurers that sold individual policies in the states before Obamacare took effect shows that the Obamacare exchanges are nationally 21.5 percent less competitive at the state level.
When compared to 2014, 2015 is an improvement, but the exchanges still remain less competitive than prior to Obamacare.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/01/16/obamacare-exchanges-decreased-competition-among-insurers/
