2017 Is Shaping Up To Be the Best Year Yet For Obamacare

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Last year, several insurance companies abandoned Obamacare because they were losing money. This year, premiums have spiked 25 percent on the exchanges. As a result, Paul Ryan says insurance markets are “collapsing,” and Republicans are promising to repeal Obamacare practically on Day 1 after Donald Trump takes office.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the collapse: Obamacare is more popular than ever. Charles Gaba is the go-to guy for Obamacare enrollment data, and the simplified chart on the right is based on his more detailed versions here and here. Last year at this time, a little over 11 million people had signed up on the exchanges. This year, a little over 12 million have signed up. Here’s what this means:

With premiums up 25 percent, a little arithmetic suggests that insurance company revenue from Obamacare will be more than a third higher this year than last year.

Time will tell what this means, but it doesn’t look like a death spiral. The premium hikes are painful, but clearly people find health insurance worth it even at the higher price. What’s more, about 85 percent of Obamacare customers qualify for federal subsidies, and for them premiums are up only slightly—and not even that much if they also shop around.

So: insurance companies will be in pretty good shape this year. A few people have seen sharp premium increases, but the vast majority haven’t. Uncle Sam is picking up most of the tab. In other words, 2017 is shaping up to be the healthiest year on record for Obamacare.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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