Health Reform Law May Lead to More Uninsured

Health Reform Law May Lead to More Uninsured

Many Choosing to Pay Fines Instead of Getting Insurance

(Washington, DC) – While the overall goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare, is to expand insurance coverage in the United States, it has many provisions which are having the opposite effect. With the exchanges not working as intended, and many Americans shocked at the high cost of health insurance due to the law, it is increasingly possible that more people will actually lose their insurance due to the ACA, than the number of people that would purchase care through the exchanges. Some families have already lost access to spousal coverage as a side effect of the law and government retirees are losing their current insurance and being shuffled to ACA exchanges. Part-time workers all over the country are also losing access to health insurance.

While it is impossible to know precisely how many people will lose coverage as a result of the reforms, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that up to 20 million people could lose employer – provided care by 2019. Furthermore, polling shows a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who are planning to pay the ACA fine instead of purchasing insurance. It is possible that it will actually increase the number of uninsured instead of reducing it.

Daniel Garza, Executive Director of The LIBRE Initiative released the following statement:

"The primary rationale for passing health reform was to make it easier and more affordable for millions more Americans to obtain health insurance – both so that they could have better access to care, and to ensure that their bills were not passed on to the taxpayers. The American people were told that without this massive new program, fewer people would get care, and the federal government would have to pay for growing emergency room use. Now we are seeing that it might not even achieve the minimum goal of reducing the number of uninsured. As even some Congressional Democrats are calling for a delay in key provisions of the law, it is time for the Administration to keep its promises, deal honestly with the very real problems with this law and take concrete steps to improve it."

For interviews with a LIBRE representative, please contact:  Judy Pino, 202-578-6424 or  Brian Faughnan, 571-257-3309.