8:17 PM
Dm Blogger
I read a great article today about the coming effects of Obamacare on the country. The information came directly from the people who will be the ones imposing it on us, the insurance companies. With millions of people expected to see increase of 20-100%. That is a large number and probably more than some people will be able to with stand. Now the plan is supposed to increase the amount of people insured by 30 million. Let's see if that actually ends up being the case, but I am wondering if they imaged that in many situations people would be forced to drop their insurance because of the increased costs. The Obamacare law or The Healthcare for America Plan, is just another of many command and control pieces of legislation wrapped in a combination of altruism and free market principles. Make no mistake though it has many dictates, guidelines and rules that inevitably distort market principles withe the added layer of subjective fairness.
The parts of the article that stuck out to me had to do with health care coverage for seniors. One such part had to do with Medicare Advantage, a private insurance plan for seniors, with imposed a tax on these plans. I am not sure how taxing people with insurance already, helps get more people insured. The only way I can interpret why this exists is to seniors out of the private plan and into a government run plan in order to get more payers into it. Though the real nugget and purpose of the article was an aspect of the plan I hadn't yet heard about. Which shifts the burden of the system more toward young people. That is right the people with the least likelihood of actually getting sick or needing health care services. Also those who are most likely not to have insurance, because why would you want to pay a couple thousand a year for a check up? Currently people over 60 can expect to pay about 5 times as much as a 24 year old. And I think anyone with a common understanding of how health insurance works, would agree that it would make a ton of sense. According to the article that gap will be reduced to 3 to 1 as more young people are forced to either pay a tax or get that $2000 a year check up. When the AARP stated a while back that Obamacare would reduce the cost of health care for senior, this is how they saw it happening. More premiums coming into the system from younger people and stricter rules on what you can charge older people. It is just that simple. I am sure many thought it was going to come at the expense of profits from the large corporations, nope not going to happen. Since they are an incredibly powerful lobby, who's members vote in the highest percentage you can image the amount of pressure they put on congress to twist this in their favor to get support.
I would suggest that the people who can most afford healthcare coverage are those baby boomers just retiring. According to a study commissioned by Metlife in 2010, those baby-boomers stand to inherit 11.6 trillion in assets. The average inheritance even for the poor is said to be $27,000. The wealthiest bracket of boomers are set to inherit an average of 1.5 million. It seems to me that the people who most easily afford to pay for increased insurance premiums are the baby boomers. Why should those just starting out in life who have no assets be asked to pay for those who have been accumulating wealth and stand to inherit more. To complicate it on a more personal level, a study done by US Trust shows that baby boomers don't share, to the same degree, the same value of leaving inheritances to their children as their parents did. By a margin of 18%. There are in my opinion many things wrong with this piece of legislation and it is shocking that even years after it was signed into law there are many things in the bill unknown by the public. I guess Nancy Pelosi was right to prevent people from seeing the bill till it was passed.
