Even the strongest Obamacare supporters admit one thing: Americans are still being charged troublingly high deductibles in their health plans.
But even if the healthcare law hasn’t helped that situation, at least it hasn’t made things worse, argues top White House economist Jason Furman.
“The important thing about this is it’s no worse,” Furman said Thursday in a speech at the liberal Center for American Progress.
The second year of enrollment in the health law’s new insurance marketplaces is over — although people facing a penalty for being uninsured have until the end of April to sign up — and the Obama administration has been pointing to evidence that it is extending coverage to millions of Americans who previously lacked coverage.
It’s still too early to definitively say how the Affordable Care Act has affected the economy overall or whether it will drive historically high healthcare spending down in the long run. But Furman made a broader case Thursday along those themes, arguing that the law is helping the economy.
“In summary, expanding coverage is helping the U.S. economy, slowing the growth of costs is helping the U.S. economy,” said Furman, who is chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Politicians and policy experts have hotly contested how the healthcare law would affect the price of health insurance — both in the monthly premiums consumers pay and the annual deductible they must pay before full benefits kick in. Premiums and deductibles were soaring for years before the health law was passed.
Research by groups including the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has found premiums in the new, state-based insurance marketplaces grew only modestly this year, although there’s wide variance by county.
It’s a different story with deductibles, which have continued to grow rapidly. Obamacare critics say insurers have used higher deductibles to push more costs onto consumers to keep premiums lower while meeting the law’s new coverage requirements.
But supporters point to consumer protections the healthcare law included, such as banning insurers from placing annual and lifetime limits on what they will pay out. Furman noted that — and emphasized that deductibles had already been rising.
“Deductibles were rising for almost a decade before the Affordable Care Act was passed and have been rising since it passed,” he said. “You can go through the policy merits or demerits on that.”
