Obama’s Mistake
As related by Jonathan Cohn, here’s what President Obama said:
[T]hey’re going to be able to go on a website or call up a call center and sign up for affordable quality health insurance at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can get right now on the individual market. And if even with lower premiums they still can’t afford it, we’re going to be able to provide them with a tax credit to help them buy it. [Emphasis added]
Yet, as Cohn notes:
Regulations requiring insurers to cover “essential” benefits, will tend to make insurance more expensive.
In addition, guaranteed issue and modified community rating requirements will make insurance more expensive for the healthy so that it can be less expensive for the sick. Since the vast majority of people are healthy, insurance premiums are going to be higher for most people, for given network and package of benefits.
What about the subsidies? They are generous at first, but after 2018 they will grow at the rate of growth of the economy ― and that is well below the expected rate of growth of health care generally.
I like the quotation marks on “essential” benefits
At a minimum they must include:
“Ambulatory patient services, such as doctor’s visits and outpatient services
Emergency services
Hospitalization
Maternity and newborn care
Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment
Prescription drugs
Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
Laboratory services
Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management
Pediatric services, including oral and vision care”
And then:
“While the ACA requires coverage for each of these categories, the law does not define the specific services that must be covered or the amount, duration, or scope of services. The HHS Secretary will define the specific benefits within each of these categories”
What are laboratory services?
Essential benefits are those benefits — some of dubious value — that busybody liberal elites and public health advocates believe everybody should have regardless of whether or not consumers are willing to pay for them.
What if they don’t want to pay for it and then require it in an emergency? If they can’t pay for it, society or the tax payer in general ends up paying the bill. I can see both sides.
In sense that’s true because when it comes to health, there is more than just individual freedom regarding coverage. I doubt anyone facing a medical emergency will forgo the chance to get care, even though that person had the choice not to prepare for expenses related to that care.
I can see that, but to what extent do we regulate this and how to prevent those at the top who benefit/profit from this? It’s a complex problem.
It is definitely a complex problem that has no simple answer except toss out Obamacare.
“Regulations requiring insurers to cover ‘essential’ benefits, will tend to make insurance more expensive.”
This is so obvious. How could the current administration not recognize it.
Exactly. Essential benefits is such an ambiguous term too, they define it too a certain extent…but even the things covered in the definition are vague.
“Regulations requiring insurers to cover ‘essential’ benefits, will tend to make insurance more expensive.”
All other things being equal, that’s true – but all other things don’t have to be equal.
I mean, why not reimburse covered expenses at a max of 60% or 70% – rather than the higher percentages in Obamacare’s present design? That would have offset most of even all the higher costs of expanded set of “essential services.”
But this administration chose to promise us comprehensive reimbursement of a very broad, almost non-exclusive range of services. . . that would end the “uninsured problem” by covering an additional 40 million people and simultaneously reduce the average family premium by $2,500 – without adding “one dime” to the deficit.
And the nation swallowed this grotesque political lie because it wished so strongly that it were actually true.
If wishes were horses we’d have a herd.
Unfortunately, what we actually have only rhymes with “herd.”
The other less talked about aspect of this is the fact that depending on your income, your cost of health insurance as a percent of income smacks the middle class right in the face. A good infographic that illustrates this is here http://j.mp/14KXiBz
You can really see how making $1 more than the FPL will end up costing people thousands.