Obamacare Continues Not to Fail

From the Wall Street Journal:

Insurers are expanding their Affordable Care Act plan offerings for next year, with the once-troubled business now generating profits, even as the overall individual-insurance market has shrunk.

The insurers’ moves reflect the business’ improved finances after sharp rate hikes in previous years helped revenues catch up to claims costs. Premium increases for 2020 so far appear likely to be moderate in many markets, after rates were relatively flat or even down this year, analysts and insurers said. “The market is now clearly stabilizing,” said Mario Schlosser, chief executive of Oscar. Oscar has proposed premium decreases in three states for next year.

Obamacare suffered some big premium increases in 2017 and 2018, but has since calmed down as gross margins improved and insurers started making money. There’s now some scope for reducing premiums or, at the least, seeing them stabilize for a few years.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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