PWC Study: Health Reform Will Drive Up Premiums
Associated Press:
[The Baucus bill] would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013…$600 for a single person. By 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.
The study, funded by the insurance industry (AHIP), says that the cost of the average family coverage, now $12,300, will rise to $21,300 in 2016 if the Senate bill is adopted. The cost of individual coverage, now $4,600, will average $7,900.
Glad to see the insurance industry finally speaking out for the first time in 10 months.
Surely this is another broken promise to the middle class.
Once again, the middle class is subjected to more taxes and or payments for services. I say middle class because the upper class will not feel the pinch as much.
This is a $4,000 tax on every family.
This is all good information….but what choice (freedom) do we have? It does no good to call anyone, this is being decided behind closed doors. The healthcare bill is done and my family is cooked. The only thing I can do is vote all these people out…with free-market opponents. If there aren’t any…I guess I move to Australia…I don’t have a choice anymore.
the PWC report is a total sham. PWC has distanced themselves from it by a wide margin:
“The reform packages under consideration have other provisions that we have not included in this analysis. We have not estimated the impact of the new subsidies on the net insurance cost to households. Also, if other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
http://factcheck.org/2009/10/the-pricewaterhousecoopers-premium-problem/
While some valid points are made, his enitre argument rests solely on the idea of a for-profit competition system being fundamentally flawed and rails against a monopolistic (which is by definition incorrect, oligopolistic perhaps) health care system. How does trading one oligopolistic system for a governmental monopoly offer a better choice? We would be trading a high cost oligopoly’ for long wait monopoly.’ Does it serve the poor, or anyone else for that matter, to be able to afford coverage they have to wait on when they need it immediately? Wouldn’t a series of well regulated non-profits be the best option? You take control away from the profiteers’, big money’, wall street’ whatever you want to call them and limit their ability to raise costs unchecked but you retain the fundamental benefits of a competitive system. I’m obviously on a website with a fundamentally one-sided political agenda; but why is the middle ground always ignored?Answer: the political primary system; but that’s an enitrely separate issue.