Turmoil in Individual Private Health Insurance Markets: Welcome to Real Competition
<p>Near-daily reports question the viability of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) private marketplaces for individual health insurance, in light of some participating insurers’ financial losses and proposed price increases. </p><p>But as The Commonwealth Fund’s David Blumenthal, M.D., and Sara Collins say in a new post on <em>To the Point</em>, it’s important to keep the nature of competitive markets in mind when assessing the marketplaces. “We should expect some local markets to work efficiently and others to struggle,” they write, and “we should expect to see winners and losers among insurers.”</p>
<p>The ultimate questions, the authors say, are whether most previously uninsured or underinsured Americans can find affordable, quality coverage through the marketplaces and whether the marketplaces are working well enough to sustain this accomplishment. </p>