Opponents of Obamacare keep on trumpeting the cost of health-care coverage. The law, because everyone has to go to a marketplace where insurance companies compete with each other to get your business, created competition in the health-care marketplace. If a public, nonprofit plan had been included in the law, it would enroll everyone, all at the same cost.
That is why the private insurers wanted universal coverage, but no fools they. They made sure the public option was not included in the law.
So the Affordable Care Act was passed by our Congress, so heavily and successfully lobbied by the private health insurers. Private insurers sell more choices of coverage in wealthier counties because there is a greater chance of their making a profit.
They consider poorer and less healthy areas too risky and more likely to reduce their profits, so they don’t compete there.
The result is that Americans in poorer counties have only one insurer selling coverage, and therefore do not face the competition from many insurers who naturally will compete with each other while still making a profit. They never give up the chance of making a profit.
One insurer has no competition and shoppers for coverage have to take what is offered, at whatever that insurer charges.
An analysis by the Wall Street Journal of offerings in 36 states supports what is actually happening to the prices of premiums.
Polls show a large majority of the public do not want the ACA repealed; they want it improved. Having a public option would greatly improve it and premium prices would be more affordable.
Esther Confino
New Hyde Park
