It’s official. Every county in America will have at least one insurer participating in the Obamacare exchanges in 2018. Bloomberg reports that “Based on the latest data, most of the 12 million people who got health insurance through Obamacare’s individual marketplaces will have the same number of companies to choose among next year as they did in 2017.” Half of all enrollees will have three or more insurers to choose from, and 77 percent of enrollees will have two or more:
I’m sure this news is breaking some hearts in Washington. The fact that everyone will get coverage and premiums will go up only slightly for the vast majority of consumers might seem like good news to ordinary people like you and me. But Paul Ryan and Donald Trump were really, really hoping that a lot of people wouldn’t get coverage this year. They were really, really hoping for a vast amount of human misery so they could say they told us so. Then they could take away coverage from millions. Because that’s how Republicans roll these days.