How to Think About Health Coverage

New Census data show the poverty rate fell for the fourth year in a row.

WSJ editorial. Excerpt:

"But Census notes that overall coverage fell one percentage point for people in families that earn 300% to 399% of the federal poverty line, and 0.8 percentage points for folks above 400%. “During this time,” Census notes, “the overall health insurance coverage rate did not statistically change for any other income-to-poverty group.”

The federal government verifies the legitimacy of only 0.3% of the 1.5 billion payments that Medicare makes every year. This keeps administrative expenses low but leads to higher costs overall. For instance, in April 2019, 24 people were charged with a $1.2 billion scam to claim reimbursement from Medicare for medical equipment. In 2018 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated that 8% of the program’s payments had been improperly made.

These are the folks we’ve written about many times: Americans who earn too much to qualify for ObamaCare subsidies but may have few alternatives. The left’s solution is to reinstate ObamaCare’s individual mandate that forces the middle class to buy the product anyway. This shows that merely having access to insurance doesn’t mean it’s valuable.

The decline in Medicaid coverage doesn’t appear to be due to folks picking up insurance at a job, and the left is blaming the higher uninsured rate on Trump Administration policies including its rules on association health plans and short-term insurance options. But the point of association health plans is to make it easier for more small businesses to offer insurance to more workers. The rule is ensnared in court in any case.

The left is also flogging that uninsured rates are lower in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act than in those that didn’t. This is presented as a reason to expand Medicaid."