JLF Health and Human Services Policy analyst Katherine Restrepo on North Carolina’s dwindling Obamacare options (emphasis mine):
The individual mandate was supposed to prevent the exchanges from collapsing. It was supposed to force young, healthy customers to purchase health insurance plans that are generally expensive and aren’t necessarily tailored to their medical needs.
But when claims costs are drastically outpacing premium revenues, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for a business, it’s a signal that the individual mandate is failing. And it’s no wonder that newspapers featured breaking news headlines that UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, will be backing out of a majority of states’ Obamacare exchanges in 2017.
It is ironic that, just hours before the news broke, the Charlotte Observer editorial board featured an article on how Obamacare is, ahem, working.
Needless to say many of the commenters beneath the Observer’s editorial —ahem—beg to differ with that viewpoint. One reader even suggests the editorial staff “read your own paper about United Healthcare and the state of NC….”
As for the N&R’s suggestion that Greensboro be allowed to set a citywide minimum wage for private employers—-not a lot of reaction from readers. Maybe nobody saw it. If the editorial staffs of major newspapers keep up such delusional thinking, fewer and fewer average citizens won’t be reading. And the newspapers will wonder why.
