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All the Bad News
About Obamacare, Single Payer, and Medicaid Expansion SINGLE PAYER - a colossally bad idea for lots of reasons - “This is a great service for all of us.” - “You’re the only one doing anything on this. It’s very helpful.” - healthcare policy analyst REPEAL OBAMACARE NOW! - legalize true catastrophic insurance - return Medicaid to a poverty program End the Obamacare Congressional Exemption! |
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2/10/23 - Obamacare Ropes More Into Government Dependency
The Biden administration is crowing about the record number of sign-ups for Obamacare this year. They shouldn’t be.
A record 16.3 million people signed up in the latest enrollment period. Supporters trumpet the notion this is double the number who signed up when Obamacare first became available. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. When they were selling us the Obamacare legislation, they promised 21 million people would sign up right away. That’s never happened, and they’re still 30 percent short of the goal they set for themselves ten years ago.
Besides, it’s no mystery why enrollment went up this year. Obamacare subsidies have been jumbo-sized and the jumbo subsidies have been extended through 2025. Now, some people don’t have to pay for it at all. They get zero-dollar premiums. If you give it away for free, of course more people will sign up. No mystery there. So now they’re practically giving it away and they’re still 30 percent short of where they thought they would be a decade ago. That’s not a triumph. It’s an utter abysmal failure. The failure is not unexpected; only half of Americans approve of Obamacare and, now as we’ve seen, most people don’t want it, unless it’s handed to them on a silver platter.
It’s not hard to see why people don’t want it. First of all, lots of the best hospitals and doctors won’t take Obamacare. Obamacare patients don’t have access to top-tier care. Doctors hate Obamacare because it adds layers of paperwork to their burdens.
Second, Obamacare has led to concentration in the individual insurance market. Prior to Obamacare, there were lots of insurers competing on price and features. Obamacare standardized many of those features and, in addition, caused lots of insurers to drop out. I read one article crowing about how most of the country now has three insurers in their state Obamacare exchange. Only three? Here’s what happens when the market becomes concentrated and you only have three companies competing for business, according to a recent GAO report:
So what’s being covered up by the jumbo subsidies is the fact that premiums are rising behind the scenes, because of Obamacare. Insurers can hike prices because federal subsidies ensure consumers don’t feel the pain. By the way, the overall price tag for those subsidies is a lot higher than originally estimated.
Obamacare is also causing overall healthcare costs to go up. The insurance taxes in Obamacare get passed along to consumers. Obamacare was supposed to keep people out of expensive emergency rooms, but ERs are more crowded than ever.
But the most insidious effect of Obamacare is increasing dependency on government. People are being trained to rely on government as the answer for everything instead of relying on themselves and looking to the private sphere for solutions to what they need. The law putting jumbo Obamacare subsidies in place also pushed welfare spending further into the middle class. A family of four that makes $111,000 a year is now eligible for subsidized health insurance. That’s crazy. Most people who take the subsidies already had health insurance, so government dependency is crowding out private insurance.
There’s been commentary recently that we’re turning into a nation of welfare moochers. People can make $80,000 to $100,000 a year in Obamacare subsidies and other government benefits for sitting around doing nothing. That’s not normal, healthy, or sustainable. As the economists like to say, things will continue until they can’t.
The Biden administration is crowing about the record number of sign-ups for Obamacare this year. They shouldn’t be.
A record 16.3 million people signed up in the latest enrollment period. Supporters trumpet the notion this is double the number who signed up when Obamacare first became available. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. When they were selling us the Obamacare legislation, they promised 21 million people would sign up right away. That’s never happened, and they’re still 30 percent short of the goal they set for themselves ten years ago.
Besides, it’s no mystery why enrollment went up this year. Obamacare subsidies have been jumbo-sized and the jumbo subsidies have been extended through 2025. Now, some people don’t have to pay for it at all. They get zero-dollar premiums. If you give it away for free, of course more people will sign up. No mystery there. So now they’re practically giving it away and they’re still 30 percent short of where they thought they would be a decade ago. That’s not a triumph. It’s an utter abysmal failure. The failure is not unexpected; only half of Americans approve of Obamacare and, now as we’ve seen, most people don’t want it, unless it’s handed to them on a silver platter.
It’s not hard to see why people don’t want it. First of all, lots of the best hospitals and doctors won’t take Obamacare. Obamacare patients don’t have access to top-tier care. Doctors hate Obamacare because it adds layers of paperwork to their burdens.
Second, Obamacare has led to concentration in the individual insurance market. Prior to Obamacare, there were lots of insurers competing on price and features. Obamacare standardized many of those features and, in addition, caused lots of insurers to drop out. I read one article crowing about how most of the country now has three insurers in their state Obamacare exchange. Only three? Here’s what happens when the market becomes concentrated and you only have three companies competing for business, according to a recent GAO report:
- From 2015 through 2020, most states' exchanges were concentrated and became more concentrated over time.... In 2020, the exchanges were concentrated in all states.... [M]arket concentration ... can result in higher premiums due to less competition in the market.”
So what’s being covered up by the jumbo subsidies is the fact that premiums are rising behind the scenes, because of Obamacare. Insurers can hike prices because federal subsidies ensure consumers don’t feel the pain. By the way, the overall price tag for those subsidies is a lot higher than originally estimated.
Obamacare is also causing overall healthcare costs to go up. The insurance taxes in Obamacare get passed along to consumers. Obamacare was supposed to keep people out of expensive emergency rooms, but ERs are more crowded than ever.
But the most insidious effect of Obamacare is increasing dependency on government. People are being trained to rely on government as the answer for everything instead of relying on themselves and looking to the private sphere for solutions to what they need. The law putting jumbo Obamacare subsidies in place also pushed welfare spending further into the middle class. A family of four that makes $111,000 a year is now eligible for subsidized health insurance. That’s crazy. Most people who take the subsidies already had health insurance, so government dependency is crowding out private insurance.
There’s been commentary recently that we’re turning into a nation of welfare moochers. People can make $80,000 to $100,000 a year in Obamacare subsidies and other government benefits for sitting around doing nothing. That’s not normal, healthy, or sustainable. As the economists like to say, things will continue until they can’t.
10/14/22 - Obamacare a Self-Inflicted Wound
The dictatorial Biden administration just made five million more Americans eligible for Obamacare with the stroke of a pen. Workers who are offered family coverage by their employers that is deemed unaffordable can now get subsidies to purchase Obamacare family policies, instead. This decision, done by administrative rule-making, should have been left to Congress. How do we know? Because the Obama administration said it didn’t have the authority to change the law on its own. Plowing straight ahead, the Biden administration has just obligated taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in new spending in a constitutional system where the House is supposed to have the power of the purse.
Still rescuing Obamacare after all these years. This thing’s a turkey. Another recent change - extending jumbo subsidies for three years - was an attempt to shore up Obamacare and buy votes. But this turkey still won’t fly. Enrollment is still nowhere near what they promised ten years ago. CBO estimated the jumbo subsidies would goose enrollment to 16 million, and changing the family rule would net another one million, leaving enrollment ten years on still far short of the 21 million they promised. So the administration can spend $100 million on navigators to dragoon people into signing up for Obamacare but - face it, folks - Obamacare just isn’t all that popular.
They also promised Obamacare would save people $2,500 a year on insurance. That never happened. Prices never went down. They went up in a straight line after Obamacare was passed. Stands to reason - subsidize something like college tuition or health insurance and, sure enough, the price goes up. The jumbo subsidies guarantee the price of Obamacare will keep going up, too.
Obamacare prices will be higher next year - 6.6 percent higher in Maryland and 7.2 percent in Wisconsin. They’re the lucky ones. Obamacare prices will go up 10 percent overall next year, more than inflation. Increases in Florida will be as high as 12 percent and - get this - as much as 46 percent higher in New York. Good grief!
Meanwhile, Obamacare continues to cause other problems. Expensive Obamacare continues to squeeze private insurance out of the market, leaving more people dependent on government-run health care programs. From 2020 to 2021, the number of private plans decreased 1.5 million while the number of people on Medicare and Medicaid went up nearly 5 million. [Steve Moore newsletter - 9/15/22]
Nancy Pelosi promised Obamacare would let people retire so they could play the violin. The opposite happened. Letting children stay on their parents’ Obamacare policies to age 26 caused ‘job lock’. People with children are more likely to stay in their current job, not less likely, because of Obamacare.
The Obamacare Healthcare.gov enrollment site has now cost $2.1 billion. You might remember this thing was called a ‘train wreck’ by a prominent Democrat when it first rolled out.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s inflation, your Thanksgiving turkey will cost more this year - 20 percent more, to be exact. But that’s still a bargain compared to the price of Obamacare, which has more than doubled since it began. Think about that - what actually happened with the Democrats’ last crazy idea - before you fall for their next crazy idea.
The dictatorial Biden administration just made five million more Americans eligible for Obamacare with the stroke of a pen. Workers who are offered family coverage by their employers that is deemed unaffordable can now get subsidies to purchase Obamacare family policies, instead. This decision, done by administrative rule-making, should have been left to Congress. How do we know? Because the Obama administration said it didn’t have the authority to change the law on its own. Plowing straight ahead, the Biden administration has just obligated taxpayers to tens of billions of dollars in new spending in a constitutional system where the House is supposed to have the power of the purse.
Still rescuing Obamacare after all these years. This thing’s a turkey. Another recent change - extending jumbo subsidies for three years - was an attempt to shore up Obamacare and buy votes. But this turkey still won’t fly. Enrollment is still nowhere near what they promised ten years ago. CBO estimated the jumbo subsidies would goose enrollment to 16 million, and changing the family rule would net another one million, leaving enrollment ten years on still far short of the 21 million they promised. So the administration can spend $100 million on navigators to dragoon people into signing up for Obamacare but - face it, folks - Obamacare just isn’t all that popular.
They also promised Obamacare would save people $2,500 a year on insurance. That never happened. Prices never went down. They went up in a straight line after Obamacare was passed. Stands to reason - subsidize something like college tuition or health insurance and, sure enough, the price goes up. The jumbo subsidies guarantee the price of Obamacare will keep going up, too.
Obamacare prices will be higher next year - 6.6 percent higher in Maryland and 7.2 percent in Wisconsin. They’re the lucky ones. Obamacare prices will go up 10 percent overall next year, more than inflation. Increases in Florida will be as high as 12 percent and - get this - as much as 46 percent higher in New York. Good grief!
Meanwhile, Obamacare continues to cause other problems. Expensive Obamacare continues to squeeze private insurance out of the market, leaving more people dependent on government-run health care programs. From 2020 to 2021, the number of private plans decreased 1.5 million while the number of people on Medicare and Medicaid went up nearly 5 million. [Steve Moore newsletter - 9/15/22]
Nancy Pelosi promised Obamacare would let people retire so they could play the violin. The opposite happened. Letting children stay on their parents’ Obamacare policies to age 26 caused ‘job lock’. People with children are more likely to stay in their current job, not less likely, because of Obamacare.
The Obamacare Healthcare.gov enrollment site has now cost $2.1 billion. You might remember this thing was called a ‘train wreck’ by a prominent Democrat when it first rolled out.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s inflation, your Thanksgiving turkey will cost more this year - 20 percent more, to be exact. But that’s still a bargain compared to the price of Obamacare, which has more than doubled since it began. Think about that - what actually happened with the Democrats’ last crazy idea - before you fall for their next crazy idea.
7/28/22 - Wrong Way Obamacare
Senate Democrats and the White House reached agreement on another big tax-and-spend bill that would, among other things, extend expanded Obamacare subsidies for three years, well past the next presidential election - how convenient. The agreement was made possible when Senator Joe Manchin reversed himself on key provisions. A vote could come next week.
The subsidies were expanded in March 2021, supposedly temporarily as part of COVID relief. Continuing jumbo Obamacare subsidies is a bad idea for several reasons. First, they subsidize wealthy people who make three times the national median income. They can receive $7,800 a year in taxpayer money to subsidize their health insurance. Are you kidding me? Second, the jumbo subsidies hide the true cost of insurance. Premiums were slated to go up substantially - an average of 10 percent nationally - but they would go up less if the bill is passed. Democrats were freaking out about huge price increases hitting consumers right before the November elections and they would lose votes as a result, but they won’t have to worry if the bill becomes law. Third, the jumbo subsidies would cost far more than the Democrats claim. A CBO analysis shows the subsidies would add $248 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Fourth, 2.3 million people would lose their job-based coverage as employers fob off health insurance costs to the federal government. It’s never a good idea to deliberately make more people dependent on the government, but that’s what the Democrats live for.
Obamacare is still a turkey, jumbo subsidies or no. The Affordable Care Act has steadily become less affordable over time. In 2015, half of middle-class families paid 7.7 percent or more of their income on the lowest-cost ACA bronze plan. But in 2019, the cost swelled to 11.3 percent and, for 55 to 64-year-olds, 19 percent. Also, drug spending went up 2 percent a year between 2015 and 2019 for people in large group plans, but 11 percent for those with individual plans because of Obamacare’s guaranteed issue preexisting condition coverage, restrictions on true underwriting, and other regulations.
We have fresh reminders of other problems with Obamacare: It limits popular short-term health insurance, which prevents some people from getting insurance at all. It bans physician-owned hospitals, which makes zero sense unless you’re a special interest afraid of competition from people who know what they’re doing. Finally, the lies used to sell this turkey continue. Joe Biden recently claimed 100 million people would lose their health insurance if Obamacare’s preexisting condition coverage went away. That was too much even for the left-wing Washington Post which gave Biden two Pinocchios for his specious claim. Biden inflated the number by including people who would face price increases, but not lose their coverage. He also included people on employer plans which typically had preexisting condition coverage before Obamacare ever came along.
Never-ending jumbo subsidies, a string of broken promises and lies, declining affordability, herding people into government dependency - there’s not a lot to like here. We’ve gone the wrong direction and the Democrats remind me of ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan who tried to fly from New York to California, but ended up in Ireland. Wish us the luck of the Irish - we’re going to need it.
Senate Democrats and the White House reached agreement on another big tax-and-spend bill that would, among other things, extend expanded Obamacare subsidies for three years, well past the next presidential election - how convenient. The agreement was made possible when Senator Joe Manchin reversed himself on key provisions. A vote could come next week.
The subsidies were expanded in March 2021, supposedly temporarily as part of COVID relief. Continuing jumbo Obamacare subsidies is a bad idea for several reasons. First, they subsidize wealthy people who make three times the national median income. They can receive $7,800 a year in taxpayer money to subsidize their health insurance. Are you kidding me? Second, the jumbo subsidies hide the true cost of insurance. Premiums were slated to go up substantially - an average of 10 percent nationally - but they would go up less if the bill is passed. Democrats were freaking out about huge price increases hitting consumers right before the November elections and they would lose votes as a result, but they won’t have to worry if the bill becomes law. Third, the jumbo subsidies would cost far more than the Democrats claim. A CBO analysis shows the subsidies would add $248 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Fourth, 2.3 million people would lose their job-based coverage as employers fob off health insurance costs to the federal government. It’s never a good idea to deliberately make more people dependent on the government, but that’s what the Democrats live for.
Obamacare is still a turkey, jumbo subsidies or no. The Affordable Care Act has steadily become less affordable over time. In 2015, half of middle-class families paid 7.7 percent or more of their income on the lowest-cost ACA bronze plan. But in 2019, the cost swelled to 11.3 percent and, for 55 to 64-year-olds, 19 percent. Also, drug spending went up 2 percent a year between 2015 and 2019 for people in large group plans, but 11 percent for those with individual plans because of Obamacare’s guaranteed issue preexisting condition coverage, restrictions on true underwriting, and other regulations.
We have fresh reminders of other problems with Obamacare: It limits popular short-term health insurance, which prevents some people from getting insurance at all. It bans physician-owned hospitals, which makes zero sense unless you’re a special interest afraid of competition from people who know what they’re doing. Finally, the lies used to sell this turkey continue. Joe Biden recently claimed 100 million people would lose their health insurance if Obamacare’s preexisting condition coverage went away. That was too much even for the left-wing Washington Post which gave Biden two Pinocchios for his specious claim. Biden inflated the number by including people who would face price increases, but not lose their coverage. He also included people on employer plans which typically had preexisting condition coverage before Obamacare ever came along.
Never-ending jumbo subsidies, a string of broken promises and lies, declining affordability, herding people into government dependency - there’s not a lot to like here. We’ve gone the wrong direction and the Democrats remind me of ‘Wrong Way’ Corrigan who tried to fly from New York to California, but ended up in Ireland. Wish us the luck of the Irish - we’re going to need it.