On Friday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press Now,” former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argued that the need to subsidize people buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace doesn’t show the system doesn’t work because “every single health plan in the United States is subsidized by the federal government,” and so it’s “totally in sync with every single other plan in the entire marketplace.”
Host Garrett Haake asked, “Something like 92% of enrollees in the ACA marketplace receive these enhanced premium subsidies. Is that a sign that this system doesn’t actually work the way it’s intended, if that many people need that much extra help, essentially?”
Sebelius responded, “Actually, every single health plan in the United States is subsidized by the federal government, some more than others. And the Affordable Care Act plans are the least subsidized at this point. Medicaid is almost fully subsidized. Medicare is heavily subsidized. Every employer plan, everybody who works for a major company or a smaller company that gets employment through their business, has a subsidy. They don’t see it. The employers write it off, tax-free, they get a benefit from that. They get a big pool. So, this is not unusual. These are folks who are buying insurance out of their own pocket for themselves and their families, and the fact that they need some additional help is totally in sync with every single other plan in the entire marketplace.”
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