While the Affordable Care Act has provided millions of Americans coverage, The New York Times reports the health law will need to change to survive the tumultuous healthcare environment.
Here are seven things to know:
1. Individual insurance market health plans are quite pricey and not accessible for many Americans, with Janet S. Trautwein, the chief executive of the National Association of Health Underwriters, noting the market is unstable compared to the 'fairly stable' employer markets.
2. In July, President Obama said in a Journal of the American Medical Association article, more work needs to be done in healthcare reform. He wrote, "Too many Americans still strain to pay for their physician visits and prescriptions, cover their deductibles or pay their monthly insurance bills; struggle to navigate a complex, sometimes bewildering system; and remain uninsured."
3. National payers like Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth have left many ACA exchanges amidst substantial losses, leading Americans in many counties with few or even one payer offering coverage.
4. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) proposed a resolution to the ACA on Sept. 15 that called for a public option. The proposal has 32 co-sponsors. Sen. Merkely noted competition is crucial to ensuring the exchanges are fruitful and the way to achieve competition is through a public option. America's Health Insurance Plans, like many insurance lobbyists, counter the public option will have a minimal impact on stabilizing the exchanges.
5. CMS is working to make healthcare more affordable and stabilizing the marketplace by giving insurance companies higher payments for high-cost enrollees and limiting abuse of special enrollment periods by Americans who only obtain coverage after becoming sick.
6. John W. Rowe, MD, a former Aetna chief executive and former president of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, told NYT the insurance marketplace will stabilize in a couple years. He noted if the ACA were a patient, "I would say that he's not in intensive care, but he's still in the hospital and requires careful monitoring."
7. Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said legislators and other officials need to work to improve the ACA, as it won't self-heal. She told NYT, "Even the most ardent proponents of the law would say that it has structural and technical problems that need to be addressed. The subsidies were not generous enough. The penalties for not getting insurance were not stiff enough. And we don't have enough young healthy people in the exchanges."
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