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Congress Deals Serious Hit to ACA The Affordable Care Act (ACA) isn’t dead, but
it’s on life support after Congress dealt the health care law a serious blow. The hit was written into the tax reform bill signed into law at the end of December. It ends the tax penalty for those who don’t have Repealing the penalty will cause: health insurance. This penalty was considered a prime motivation for many to comply with the ACA’s requirement that everyone have coverage. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said repealing that penalty would produce 13 million additional uninsured people and push premiums higher by an average of 10 percent. The number of uninsured people would grow mostly because fewer people would be expected to get coverage under Medicaid or by buying individual policies.
+13M more uninsured +10% premiums
LIFE EXPECTANCY DROPS FOR SECOND YEAR
Opioids continue to take their toll on American lives, leading to a drop in U.S. life expectancy for the second consecutive year. In 2016, drug overdoses claimed 63,600 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The age-adjusted overdose death rate rose 21 percent, to 19.8 per 100,000 in 2016 from 16.3 per 100,000 in 2015.
Anderson, chief of the National Center for Health Statistics’ mortality statistics branch.
VANGUARD SOUNDS ALARM ON 2018 STOCK MARKET
The stock market set records in 2017, but Vanguard issued a report that warns the good times might not last in 2018. Vanguard released a dour research note on prospects for the 2018 stock market, citing higher interest rates , increased inflation and stronger market volatility at the center of its argument. U.S. investors should be worried that a wage or inflation hike could lead markets to reprice a more aggressive path of policy rate normalization by the Federal Reserve. That would end a long period of low volatility, the note said. In fact, Vanguard said its outlook for global stocks and bonds is the “most subdued it has been in a decade.”
U.S. life expectancy dropped to 78.6 years in 2016 The surge contributed to life expectancy dropping to 78.6 years from 78.7 years, the first time that figure has declined two years in a row since the 1960s. If drug overdoses continue to increase this year, life expectancy could decrease again. If that happens, it would be the first time since the Spanish flu swept through the country a century ago, said Robert DID YOU
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The Trump administration is now estimating the Republican tax bill will generate about $1.8 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years by boosting economic growth. Source: Joint Committee on Taxation
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » February 2018
This number is higher than anyone expected, and has to be considered a success. — Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation on the 8.8 million people who signed up for health insurance coverage under the most recent open enrollment period.
WHAT AMERICANS SPENT IN 2017
Americans shelled out more money in 2017 than they did the previous year. American consumers spent $130.6 trillion in 2017, a 2.7 percent increase from 2016, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Higher spending was reported on everything from yachts to groceries. However, technology drove expenditures on some outdated services such as postal service and video rentals down to a fraction of what they were in previous years. Some interesting tidbits from the survey: Americans spent about 5.6 percent more on child care in 2017 than in 2016, spent 4.42 percent more on financial services charges and fees and spent 3 percent more on new cars. One expenditure that went down: insurance. Americans spent $1.09 trillion on life and home insurance in 2017, down 2.12 percent from 2016.
American consumers spent $130.6 trillion in 2017
+2.7% from 2016