Competition in Obamacare Exchanges Declined in 2016

The Daily Signal reports:

While the participation level in 2016 is greater than the 253 insurers that offered exchange coverage in 2014, the figures for all three years are still well below the 395 insurers that offered individual market coverage in 2013, prior to the law taking effect.

The second measure is the number of insurers offering exchange coverage in each state. Relative to 2015, the results are that 45 percent of states (22 states and DC) have fewer insurers offering exchange coverage in 2016, while only 10 states have more.

The third is the number of unique carriers selling exchange coverage. For this measure, each insurer is counted only once, regardless of the number of states in which it offered exchange coverage. Applying this metric for nationwide insurer participation finds that there were 154 different carriers offering exchange coverage in 2014, increasing to 155 in 2015, but dropping to 137 in 2016.

A related report, issued by the office of U. S. Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb., looked at exchange competition at the county level. It found that in 2016 there is only one insurer offering exchange coverage in 225 counties (7.2 percent), another 915 counties (29.1 percent) have only two exchange insurers, and a further 841 counties (26.8 percent) have three competing insurers.

All cartelization schemes aim to limit supply and drive up prices: the progressive movement in a nutshell. As Professor Murray Rothbard has said, progressivism is nothing more than the resurrection of mercantilism.