Bloomberg’s Megan McCardle notices that consumers were sold a lemon (too bad Obama’s Consumer Protection Agency can’t do anything about that bad actor, Barack Obama), based on a New Yorker article which states that most people will either be winners or unaffected. What’s the reality?
(Washington Post) Americans who face higher Âinsurance costs under President Obama’s health-care law are angrily complaining about “sticker shock,†threatening to become a new political force opposing the law even as the White House struggles to convince other consumers that they will benefit from it.
The growing backlash involves people whose plans are being discontinued because the policies don’t meet the law’s more-stringent standards. They’re finding that many alternative policies come with higher premiums and deductibles. (snip past yet another story of someone losing their plan and paying a lot more)
If the poor, sick and uninsured are the winners under the Affordable Care Act, the losers appear to include some relatively healthy middle-income small-business owners, consultants, lawyers and other self-employed workers who buy their own insurance. Many make too much to qualify for new federal subsidies provided by the law but not enough to absorb the rising costs without hardship. Some are too old to go without insurance because they have children or have minor health issues, but they are too young for Medicare.
They’re losers by design. The “Affordable” Care Act needs healthy people with good jobs to pay for all the people who aren’t healthy and are getting subsidies, along with the massive number of people being moved to Medicaid. The rules set up by HHS, which was granted enormous power and latitude to establish How Obamacare Works by the horribly written law, bake the cake to make some winners and many many more losers.
Remember, we haven’t even gotten to the point where employers are receiving their cancellation notices.
Others are upset because they don’t want coverage for services they’ll never need or their doctors don’t participate in any of their new insurance options.
Again, this was baked in the cake. The extra coverages are cover for the bad parts of the law, much like the “popular” ideas, like insurers not being able to cancel coverage or deny coverage. This gives Democrats talking points about how much better the coverage is than before. The reality is people will pay more for things they will never use, and that extra money goes to make up for those who will overuse and/or aren’t healthy. Reducing the coverage system will also reduce costs. Baked into the system, just like Conservatives said would happen.
Instead of creating a system where everyone was a winner, which is what government should do (except in cases of criminal activity), they created a system where most with insurance will be losers.
