New Hampshire residents will have even fewer choices for health insurance next year as Community Health Options announced last week that it is dumping the Granite State to concentrate on its core business in Maine.
One insurance company after another has decided that it can’t operate under the Affordable Care Act, especially after Congress shut down the “risk corridors” they had hoped to use to defray losses.
The entire Obamacare scheme was set up on faulty premises. You can’t force people to buy health insurance they don’t want, subsidize mediocre insurance plans people can’t afford, and still claim to hold down rising medical expenses.
The coverage mandates at the heart of the failing law were the reason why the insurance industry backed the law so forcefully, even as Democrats demagogued the big insurance companies.
Insurance providers thought they’d make a killing when the federal government forced customers to buy its products. Instead, new customers are flooding emergency rooms, and the insurance companies are losing millions. So they are leaving the marketplace.
Meanwhile, 11,500 Granite Staters are scrambling to find new health insurance plans. The Democrats’ solution is to put more people on Medicare.
The question we should be asking congressional candidates isn’t whether they would repeal Obamacare. The program is destroying itself. The question is how would they replace it.