If congressional Republicans could somehow repeal the Affordable Care Act, they would be picking the pockets of more than 8.5 million Americans who are receiving insurance rebates this summer, President Obama will say on Thursday.
The White House for weeks has looked for a ripe opportunity to argue that congressional Republicans, by voting nearly 40 time to repeal “Obamacare,” seek to rob American families of health coverage they need and use, as the 2010 law continues to go into effect through 2015.
A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services will provide just such an occasion Thursday morning: The president will appear in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by an invited group of everyday Americans who have received rebates from their health insurers. The event allows Obama to engage in some positive storytelling about the ACA as a “step away from the abstraction,” said one administration official, who spoke to reporters Wednesday on background.
One provision of the complex law says if health insurers fail to spend at least 80 percent of insurance premiums on better care and coverage, rather than administrative costs, the companies must remit a portion to their insured customers. As health care savings add up and disincentives for large rate hikes take hold in the insurance marketplace, the law envisions the rebates will eventually become nonexistent.
Obama will host the group of beneficiaries at a time when the rebates are a new, pro-consumer reality, and he hopes to make the point that insured American families living in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., received $ 131 from the companies, on average. Obama wants to say consumers are benefiting from the new law — not just the insurance companies, who expect a surge of new clients because Americans are now mandated to carry insurance. Counting U.S. territories, the average rebate from insurers to all U.S. families was $ 98, according to a chart compiled by the administration.
Separately, some states are reporting that insurance plans slated to be offered to the uninsured in those marketplaces are significantly less costly than insurance available now to individuals through the private marketplace, in many parts of the country. (A majority of Americans continue to have health coverage through their employers.)
The president believes the law’s measurable benefits can be counterweights to GOP talk of repealing Obamacare, as well as a partial rebuttal to media interest in the administration’s struggles to get uninsured Americans — particularly young and healthy people — to buy private coverage (and in some cases federally subsidized health insurance) this fall through the new state-based marketplaces.
Obama’s spokesman said implementation of the law is the administration’s main concern right now. But public relations and politics are clearly in the mix. Another administration official said Republicans helped transform the controversial law into “a political football.”
Hours after the officials briefed reporters, the House approved two separate measures to delay for a year the law’s requirement that individuals must have health insurance by 2014, and the companion requirement that most employers must cover their workers.
The administration previously announced it is delaying until 2015 the law’s mandate that businesses with 50 or more workers provide health insurance — to give employers more time to comply.
If House Republicans had their way, they would “overturn a law that is providing enormous benefits, and as we’ve seen again, will provide even more benefits to the American people,” Press Secretary Jay Carney argued during his afternoon briefing.
The administration will release a report from HHS on Thursday showing that in 11 states, the lowest cost insurance plans in the new exchanges appear to be, on average, 18 percent less costly than projections made by the Congressional Budget Office when the Affordable Care Act was enacted, officials said. The administration believes that lower costs, as the marketplaces ramp up, signal robust private competition and consumer choices, which officials anticipate will drive health costs down for everyone.
The administration selected 10 blue or purple states (plus Washington, D.C.) in its Thursday report because data was available for comparative purposes, the officials explained. The information offered included California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state.
“When the president is there, standing on stage with individuals who have received a refund, the abstraction of a repeal vote becomes the reality of essentially saying, ‘Okay, should these folks be sending the money back?’ ” an official said.
Republicans’ repeal mantra “is all about the noise, it’s about the politics of the issue,” he said.
Obama to Tout Health Law"s Insurance Rebate
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