Around four million people could no longer have insurance in the coming years as a result of the Covid subsidies ending, said Leighton Ku, a health policy professor at George Washington’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. Health insurance costs are expected to increase 114% on average – or by around $1,000 annually, according to KFF – for those receiving the subsidies, though the price increase varies greatly depending on income.
The number of overlapping health care systems in the US – Medicare, Medicaid, the marketplace, employer-sponsored insurance and veteran’s health, among others – creates a confusing and sometimes wasteful system, said McDonough.
“We have so many, each of them with their own set of rules, their own system, their own bureaucracy,” he said. “We really do need some system consolidation.”
Other smaller solutions could help affordability, such as the White House negotiating to reduce the price of more drugs provided by government insurance programmes, as well as regulating competition within the health care industry to help keep prices lower, said Jonathan Zhang, an assistant professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
Finding consensus on this issue has been elusive.
“While there’s strong bipartisan agreement I think across the board that we have a problem, people can’t seem to come together for the solution,” Stahl said.
In the absence of federal reforms, some state governments have tried to help, banning medical debt from being included in credit reports so people can access loans to help pay off the healthcare providers, and providing separate subsidies for monthly health insurance costs.