You might have noticed that just in the last few days, there have been several major stories about how ♡bamaCare!!!’s own beneficiaries can’t afford to use their coverage. Well, there’s not much new here, but Michael Cannon has done a fine job of putting together exactly why ♡bamaCare!!! causes higher deductibles and higher premiums, so I encourage you to share this one.
Read:
For decades, government has encouraged more comprehensive health insurance than Americans would demand if they were spending their own money. This has led to a lot of wasteful spending on low-value health insurance and low-value medical care.
Free-market advocates have proposed getting government out of Americans’ health insurance decisions. Ending government encouragement of comprehensive coverage would cause people to gravitate toward less-comprehensive coverage–either coverage with more cost-sharing, such as high deductibles, or health plans where the insurer helps consumers to avoid low-value medical care, also known as managed care. One of the main benefits of high-deductible health insurance in a market system is that consumers who choose high deductibles save money on their premiums and therefore have more resources to pay their out-of-pocket expenses.
That is not what happens under Obamacare. Obamacare’s community-rating price controls and other regulations jack up people’s premiums considerably. Those folks then gravitate to high-deductible plans because buying less insurance helps them minimize those hidden taxes. ObamaCare often leaves those people worse off: they face either higher premiums, or higher deductibles, or both.
You might want to add that people receiving subsidies for their high premiums — you and your friend on the hook for those subsidies, out of your incomes taxes.
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