OBAMACARE; THE NIGHTMARE COMES WHEN THEY WAKE UP TO LOSING COVERAGE
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=532481
According To Plan?
Health Care: The Democrats’ overhaul was going to boost the number of insured Americans, wasn’t it? And everyone who liked his own plan could keep it. Except for the 14 million who will lose their coverage at work.
When Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, issued a report last month on the financial effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, attention was fixed on his spending estimates, and rightly so: Overall health care spending would grow by $311 billion from 2010 to 2019 due to the Democrats’ reform, while federal spending would rise by $211 billion over that same time.
These figures are germane because health care reform was sold as the policy that would cut spending and bring down the deficit. President Obama promised the overhaul wouldn’t add “one dime” to the deficit, which is probably that same dime he said he wouldn’t raise taxes by on families earning less than $250,000 a year.
Obama also promised that “nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” And “if you like your health care plan,” he said more than once, “you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Strictly speaking, that’s correct. But left unsaid was the fact that lawmakers placed provisions in the law that will give companies incentives to drop workers from employer-sponsored medical plans.
“Some smaller employers would be inclined to terminate their existing coverage, and companies with low average salaries might find it to their — and their employees’ — advantage to end their plans,” Foster wrote in his April 22 report.
The actuary estimates that the law “would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 14 million.”
Some losing their plans will end up with coverage from the subsidized health insurance exchanges, which are unlikely to be plans they will be happy with. Others, according to Foster, will be dumped — our word — in the expanded Medicaid program, a lousy turn of events that they absolutely won’t be happy with.
As the country continues to learn about what their representatives in Congress voted for, the image coming into focus is a portrait of an ugly future. In the weeks after the health care bill became law, we have also learned that:
• Americans earning less than $200,000 a year will pay $3.9 billion more in taxes in 2019 alone, while premiums for “young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17% on average, or roughly $42 a month,” according to an AP analysis.
• Uninsured Americans will be more willing to pay the penalty for not buying coverage than they are to enroll in subsidized plans because they believe those plans still cost too much.
• The government tried to intimidate companies that candidly announced the law would increase their expenses by billions.
• The Congressional Research Service believes parts of the reform are unconstitutional. No, not the individual mandate that surely goes against our foundational law, but other provisions.
We agree with the vice president. The health care reform law is a big deal. But big isn’t its sole feature. It’s bad, too.
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