Obamacare has completely distorted the health care sector to the point where an astounding number of Americans simply paid the fine from the individual mandate rather than paying for insurance.
The total number of people who paid the fine instead of enrolling in Obamacare in 2016: 6.5 million.
And if the individual mandate were repealed, an additional 15 million people would drop out of Obamacare.
Scott Rasmussen explained in Ballotpedia that Obamacare has driven up health care costs because it requires insurers to cover a range of health care benefits that many people view as unnecessary for their medical situation, so they would prefer a plan that’s skimpier and cheaper instead.
He also pointed out that Obamacare has also depressed wage growth, since most health insurance is provided through employers.
The fact that millions of people simply paid the fine in 2016 and millions more would drop out of Obamacare if the individual mandate was nixed, highlights the problem of the death spiral: as costs rise due to Obamacare’s burdensome regulations, people will forgo insurance altogether, thus causing costs to increase even more due to less money in the risk pool.
The death spiral continues to worsen with each passing day, as it was recently reported that Anthem will exit Nevada’s Obamacare exchange in 2018 and reduce their presence in Georgia’s by 50%. Meanwhile, Americans are still feeling the pain of the Obamacare albatross and are livid that congressional Republicans haven’t repealed it yet, as demonstrated by their approval rating plummeting to 16%.