- Number of Uninsured Americans on the Rise, Especially in Texas, New Study Finds Houston Chronicle by Jenny Deam — The historic gains in Texas and the rest of the nation are now slipping away as the uninsured rate starts to rise again, a new national health care report has found. The rate of working age adults without health coverage — those between age 19 and 64 — has ticked up to about 15.5 percent so far in 2018, up from 12.7 percent in 2016, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey released this month. That translates to about 4 million people nationwide once covered who no longer are insured, the survey found.
- Trump's Plan for Cheaper Health Insurance Could Have Hidden Costs New York Times by Robert Pear — President Trump's plan to expand access to skimpy short-term health insurance policies, as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, would affect more people and cost the government more money than the administration estimated, an independent federal study says. The study, by Medicare's chief actuary, suggests that the new policies would appeal mainly to healthy people, including many who have had comprehensive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Those remaining in Affordable Care Act marketplaces "would be relatively less healthy," Mr. Spitalnic said, and as a result, the average premiums for those insurance policies would increase...The Trump administration estimated the extra cost to the federal government at $96 million to $168 million a year. But the chief actuary, whose independence is protected by federal law, estimates that the rule proposed by the administration could increase federal spending by $1.2 billion next year and by a total of $38.7 billion over 10 years.