A Fool and Your Money Pt II
More ObamaCare woes, via Human Events and PricewaterhouseCooper:
The really awful news is PWC’s projection of employer reaction to ObamaCare’s crushing mandates. Their survey shows “nearly half of employers will drop their coverage, dumping employees into the government-run exchanges.” Also, “four out of five employers will make changes to help cover new costs under ObamaCare, including raising premiums, deductibles, and co-payments.”
So much for “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” The tidal wave of people slamming into the federal exchanges will become a nuclear deficit explosion. We’ll all be able to look back at the charlatans who claimed ObamaCare would be deficit-neutral, and the simpletons who believed them, and laugh through our tears.
It’s almost as though driving everyone into the ever-lovin’ arms of Uncle Sugar was part of some kind of subterfuge. Oh, wait –
What tears? I’m thinking more along the lines of Vir and Morden:
It’s almost like all the critics of the “plan” were right. No, I don’t expect anyone who supported Obamacare to recognize that.
Yes, it is a feature, not a bug.
Hell, I’d like to see every employer in the nation with a workforce of more than 20 band together and dump health insurance from their compensation packages anyway. My anecdotal evidence that depending on your employer for health insurance distorts the labor market is utterly meaningless, but I bet a cache of solid data would show the same thing. Let insurance companies peddle their products in all 57 states and watch prices plunge as people pick and choose the private plan they want. I know exactly what policy I’d get: something dirt cheap so I wouldn’t have to hock my house in case a piano falls on me, plus an asthma rider. IF ONLY SOMEONE WOULD SELL ME THE FRAKKING THING.
Reminds me of the contingent of blog-libertarians who said they were going to vote for Obama because Bush spent too much.
I mocked them then for believe for a microsecond that Democrats were going to lower spending, and I mock them now.
I’m not a fan of Obamacare, or government health insurance, but the current system is nuts.
About half of US medical payments come from the government at a steep cram-down discount from private insurance. Private health insurance subsidizes the government through the back door by paying higher rates for the same services.
Government payments are so low that a Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) system of additional subsidies had to be created to keep hospitals that rely heavily on Medicare and Medicaid patients from going under.
But the real issue is that we have “insurance” acting as a middle man to pay for routine medical care. The current system began an artifact of the wage and price controls that forced employers to compete for employees based on benefits.
Healthcare providers have ridiculously high list prices for services, so payers are forced to negotiate contract discounts that usually amount to over 50% of the billed amount. To take advantage of the discounts you have to buy insurance to pay for services that you really should be paying without a middle man.
The net result is a highly profitable parasitic “health insurance” industry siphoning money from healthcare. Eliminate the middle men for routine medical care and you’ll make a good start in bringing down healthcare costs.