The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly four million Obamacare enrollees dropped coverage once the generous subsidies ended. In 2014 enrollment was just under 13 million. Between 2020 and 2025 enrollment about doubled to 24 million. Part of that could have been worry about the lingering risk of Covid, but generous enhanced subsidies undoubtedly boosted people’s willingness to enroll. Now people are dropping coverage.
Category: Affordable Care Act
Some Patients Travel Abroad for Cheaper Drug Prices
Consider the drug, Trikafta, for cystic fibrosis. It’s a specialty drug that costs nearly $14,000 for a prescription, or about $346,000 a year. The patent(s) are not expected to expire for another 11.5 years. Of course, very few cystic fibrosis patients can afford that, but they’re not expected to. Their health insurers or employee health plans are supposed to pony up $350k a year on their behalf. To some degree you can thank Obamacare for hyper expensive drugs. By banning annual caps and lifetime caps on benefits (and mandating drug coverage) the Affordable Care Act created a market for completely unaffordable drugs.
Why Not Fix the Health Care System Rather than Throw More Money at It?
Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health News is once again writing about families who dropped coverage due to Affordable Care Act plans becoming unaffordable. Newsflash: they never were affordable.
Wednesday Links – 17 June 2026
- China may find a cure for cancer before we do.
- Paragon: More than 6 million improper Obamacare enrollees in 2026.
- Does government welfare crowd our social capital? Apparently.
- The Manhattan Institute has an immigration calculator. You plug in various policy options and it tells you what the effects are on federal finances.
- Here is what Yglesias has to say about it.