Summary: “While the political world focuses on the Affordable Care Act, changes have been occurring for the many more Americans who get health insurance through work,” Drew Altman writes over on The Washington Wire blog at The Wall Street Journal. While I don’t agree that the debate is “missing” on this topic, as he suggests, it is a very real issue — and an issue that we hear about daily. “The biggest change: rising deductibles, which are transforming the nature of health insurance from more comprehensive coverage to skimpier insurance with higher out-of-pocket costs. This change has happened gradually and has not been the subject of a big legislative debate, as the Affordable Care Act was. The shift is not a result of Obamacare; the trend began well before the ACA was passed in 2010. The trend is not highly politicized or covered daily by the general news media. All of which contribute to making the changing nature of insurance the most important development in the U.S. health system the public is not debating.” Drew Altman, “The Missing Debate Over Rising Health-Care Deductibles,” Washington Wire, The Wall Street Journal.
