Sarah Kliff · Monday, October 31, 2016, 7:15 am
Jason Furman has become accustomed to proclamations of Obamacare’s collapse.
“Having been involved in the [Affordable Care Act] since 2009, I have heard it pronounced dead hundreds of times,” says Furman, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “Half of those times were before it was even signed [into law], and half were since then.”
Obamacare has survived those other predictions. And Furman says the law will absolutely survive the current round of double-digit rate hikes, too. He argues that what we’re seeing in the marketplaces is a one-time course correction rather than any sign of collapse.
“I think it is absolutely impossible for these markets to enter a death spiral,” he says. “It is frankly crazy that people are leaping to the death spiral conversation.”
I spoke with Furman and his colleague Matt Fiedler, chief economist at the CEA, Friday afternoon about Obamacare’s marketplaces, what the premium increases mean, and why they believe a death spiral would be impossible given the health law’s structure. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.
Read more
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/10/31/13459818/obamacare-white-house-economist
This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
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