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As is well known by now, Obamacare is a massive
redistribution scheme, taking from the middle class and giving to the poor.
Apparently, many members of the middle class, to say nothing
of their Congressional representatives, did not know that they were going to be
paying for what they voted for.
Now, across America, many people who had their insurance
plans canceled cannot afford the new plans that are being offered on the
exchanges.
It depends on where the subsidies end. Those who earn too
much to receive a government subsidy face a choice between going broke paying for
insurance or going without it. Apparently, the administration wants insurance
companies to offer new “catastrophic plans” but the jury is still out about how
that is going to happen and what that will do to Obamacare.
Some optimistic commentators have suggested that Obamacare is
disintegrating before our very eyes, and that would be a good thing indeed. Yet,
each time the administration tries to rejigger the program by intervening yet
again in a market (the insurance market) that it does not understand, it makes
a bigger mess.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran an excellent—that means, objective and informative—story about
the people who did not qualify for subsidies. As noted her before, the Times—to
my surprise—has done some great reporting on the Obamcare crash. Credit where
credit is due.
We know that the mainstream media has been running interference
for Barack Obama from the beginning. Now that his administration’s failure is
too big to cover up, the president has found himself adrift. Having lost the
New York Times, he is lost.
Here’s an excerpt from yesterday’s story:
The
Chapmans acknowledge that they are better off than many people, but they
represent a little-understood reality of the Affordable Care Act. While the act
clearly benefits those at the low end of the income scale — and rich people can
continue to afford even the most generous plans — people like the Chapmans are
caught in the uncomfortable middle: not poor enough for help, but not rich
enough to be indifferent to cost.
“We are
just right over that line,” said Ms. Chapman, who is 54 and does administrative
work for a small wealth management firm. Because their plan is being canceled,
she is looking for new coverage for her family, which includes Mr. Chapman, 55,
a retired fireman who works on a friend’s farm, and her two sons. “That’s an
insane amount of money,” she said of their new premium. “How are you supposed
to pay that?”
An
analysis by The New York Times shows the cost of premiums for people who just
miss qualifying for subsidies varies widely across the country and rises
rapidly for people in their 50s and 60s. In some places, prices can quickly
approach 20 percent of a person’s income.
Experts
consider health insurance unaffordable once it exceeds 10 percent of annual
income. By that measure, a 50-year-old making $50,000 a year, or just above the
qualifying limit for assistance, would find the cheapest available plan to be
unaffordable in more than 170 counties around the country, ranging from
Anchorage to Jackson, Miss.
A
60-year-old living in Polk County, in northwestern Wisconsin, and earning
$50,000 a year, for example, would have to spend more than 19 percent of his
income, or $9,801 annually, to buy one of the cheapest plans available there. A
person earning $45,000 would qualify for subsidies and would pay about 5
percent of his income, or $2,228, for an inexpensive plan.
In
Oklahoma City, a 60-year-old earning $50,000 could buy one of the cheapest
plans for about 6.6 percent of his income, or about $3,279 a year with no
subsidy. If he earned $45,000, with the benefit of a subsidy, he would spend
about $2,425.
The FiscalTimes adds another salient fact. The more people are spending for
health insurance the less they will be spending on discretionary items:
If even
a fraction of the middle class and upper middle income earners divert some of
their discretionary dollars to pay for health care, it will have a significant
impact on consumer spending. What will that mean for the economy?
Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the nation’s GDP, although
experts say that number
is likely to decline.
The top
20 percent of income earners account for about 40 percent of all
spending in the U.S. When you increase the costs of health care and the
new taxes associated with Obamacare, you can hear the wallets closing.
5 comments:
I used to wonder, when reading about Mao's "Great Leap", how those in positions of authority could be so utterly blind to the havoc their policies were wreaking. Surely no one intended to starve to death millions of people. Though as yet no one has died from our health care debacle, I begin to understand. The powers that be simply wish for a certain outcome and are so certain of their own abilities and the 'rightness' of their cause that they double-down in the face of obvious failures. They simply can't fathom that they are wrong either in their theories or policies, evidence to the contrary be damned
While the poor are complicit, their role is to protect other interests.
Obamacare is designed to protect Obama and others who live in highly financed and subsidized districts. It is evidence that local and regional economies are either stagnant or recessive; and that inflationary forces, including trillion dollar deficits, have taken their toll.
The premiums do not even tell the whole story. The groups in your article might have to pay deductibles of up to $5,000 or higher, before insurance payments start kicking in This makes their insurance even more unaffordable. Does anyone know whether even the subsidized, who have much lower premiums, still have large deductibles?
I have read about this in various places, and might even have posted about it, but you are quite right... the deductibles are very high for most plans... the only people who are really going to find this affordable are those who are signing up for Medicaid... that this is not very high quality care.
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