There Are Five Losers for Every ObamaCare Winner
Duke University’s Chris Conover has examined who wins and who loses under ObamaCare. Losers include pretty much everyone: Medicare beneficiaries, Medicaid beneficiaries, employees, and self-insured.
His conclusion:
When all is said and done, were ObamaCare fully in place right now, 166 million of today’s population could reasonably count themselves as losers in various ways, while only 34.6 million would be lucky enough to count as winners. That’s a ratio of 4.8 losers for every winner — not a particularly good outcome for any policy initiative, much less a “signature” legislative initiative.
Let this be evidence that not “all” Americans or even “most” Americans are better off due to this new legislation. In fact as the study shows, most Americans are worse off. Dr. Emmanuel stated it not so long ago, that people that were previously benefited, will now have to lose. The problem is that the majority of the population is losing, while only a few are actually being benefited. 3.8 percent of big winners don’t justify the overhaul that the industry just experienced.
Gruber was right in saying that no law can help everyone. But the law, that was passed with good intentions, has caused adverse effects to many individuals all throughout America.
Perhaps this is proof that our representatives no longer have the people’s best interest in mind.
I agree with that, there is no law that will benefit everyone; there will always be some sort of losers when there are new laws. But when there are more people being harmed than benefited, it is a good hint that the reform wasn’t in the best interest of the people. Does the law do more good than bad? That is the question that those analyzing policy should raise when there are plans for new laws. We cannot leave the analysis to be done by partisan groups, because their ideology will cloud their judgment.
I’m not really sure anyone wins here in the long run.
This is the outcome for health care policies that are more politically skewed than helping individuals.
“We didn’t have to hurt some people to help some people in this country, but that’s precisely what we did.”
No words have rung truer when describing ObamaCare.
The deficits created by out-of-control entitlement spending will accrue for our grandchildren. Did you calculate the losers yet unborn?
That’s probably in the next graph. The baby boomers are sure having fun increasing the deficit, so the millennials and their children can foot the bill.
And they say the millennials are the lost generation…
That is basically the main rationale for the Affordable Care Act. The goal was to help sick people who are the outliers by making healthy people cross-subsidize them. The goal was also to cross-subsidize the premiums of moderate-income individuals. Proponents also wanted to spread the costs to employers.
Being a independent social scientist, Dr. Conover draws a non-partisan conclusion.
The concept for redistribution of taking a bit from the many to significantly help the few worst off kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? (Assuming you’ve chosen redistribution in the first place).
There are a lot of good points as usual from Mr Conover.
I would quibble on one small point, where he described one group of small losers are persons who lose employer coverage and get Medicaid.
Based on my experience selling insurance, the persons who are poor enough to get Medicaid hardly ever have employer coverage in the first place. If they do, they might have a high deductible policy that they could scarcely afford to use even when they had it.
The security guard at Walmart making $14,000 for part time work is the kind of person who might lose employer coverage and get Medicaid. I know Medicaid has poor access, but it is stone free of premiums and deductibles, and when you are poor, that means a heck of a lot.
Medicaid is kind of like the British NHS — you pay not to wait, or you wait not to pay.
Although I agree that there are some who will benefit from the ACA, there is a big group of losers out there. There are millions who fall into the Medicaid coverage gap will remain without coverage. They do not qualify for Marketplace coverage and happen to live in one of several southern states who refused to expand Medicaid coverage. Unfortunately, these millions of poor people are left without coverage. This seems to be an aspect of the implementation of the ACA that’s being overlooked. For those who do purchase from the Marketplace and pay a $400+ premium, what about this is affordable to a family of 4 with roughly $50,000 annual income??
This is based on the work of someone with the conservative American Enterprise Institute that was published in Forbes.