The [2010 Affordable Care Act], known as Obamacare, was passed on promises that premiums would decline by forcing everyone into insurance plans, and that top-down mechanisms like mandates on coverage and the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) would control costs. That hasn’t proven to be the case, and indeed, both premiums and costs are skyrocketing – just as anyone who understood the impact that mandates would have on risk pools and tax hikes on prices predicted.
As the open enrollment period for 2014 approaches, premiums on individual plans in the Obamacare exchanges for California will double, and will increase 80 percent or more in Ohio. At the end of its first decade in force, the ACA will leave more than 30 million Americans without insurance – the driving issue behind health-care reform for at least the last twenty years.
So! How're things?
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If only someone had pointed out in advance that this bill was so vast, so complex, that it might have unintended consequences! If only it hadn't been borne along on such a flood tide of unanimous acclamation!
ReplyDeleteAlas, nobody could have seen this coming, I fear.
Malcolm? That you? I sense a tremor in the Force that corresponds to your bitter sarcasm.
ReplyDeleteThere have been a number of wonkier blogs bloviating on this for a while now. It is not an apples to oranges comparison. Individual rates are going to superficially increase in California (really the only state I care about since this is where I am.) However, everyone but the young and healthy have been largely unable to buy individual policies. And those policies the young and healthy could buy were riddled with holes and small physician networks (Kaiser being an exception.) So now everyone will be able to buy a policy that will actually cover things. It will cost more than the sticker price of current policies which were useless and very few people could buy.
ReplyDeleteObamacare is a stinking turd, but what we have without it is a putrid cesspool. We are going to have to change it multiple times before it's right. This is how reality works. The grown-up thing to do is get on with it and start iterating until we reach a good equilibrium. Anyone paying attention knows that we are not currently at a reasonable equilibrium and things have to change.
Guilty as charged. A slip of the mouse.
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