How to Protect Yourself From Obamacare

[guido911]

Trey Gowdy hit the nail on the head. The ACA is the legacy of Obama's presidency. It's his centerpiece, legislative accomplishment. And even he doesn't want it implemented.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I don't agree the system was broken, though there needed to be some protection for people with pre-existing conditions as well as insurance portability.  Insurance as an employee benefit has always been for higher paying career positions, not entry level jobs.  Additional funding for Medicaid would have accomplished a lot of good things for many uninsured Americans without messing with the benefits of those who have a higher income level.  

You don't agree only because you aren't part of the half of this country that have been directly exposed to that massively broken system for the last many, many decades.  While enjoying erosion of your standard of living by 30% and more over the last 40 years.

[Conan71]

You don't agree only because you aren't part of the half of this country that have been directly exposed to that massively broken system for the last many, many decades.  While enjoying erosion of your standard of living by 30% and more over the last 40 years.

More LWRE spew.  

Actually no.  My standard of living has improved by a very good margin over the last 40 years.

The reason I don’t agree, is I don’t see the point in revamping an entire system which did not need to be revamped as a whole. As previously mentioned there certainly were things the government could have done different to help those who don’t have proper coverage while keeping from meddling with coverage that did work for many Americans.

I’ve been uninsured and under-insured in the past.  I paid for my second daughter’s birth entirely out of pocket as I had a personal policy on my family and did not elect to get maternity coverage because my wife and I weren’t planning on another child at that point in time.  That’s just the way it goes when you are young and your priorities are different.  I also ended up paying for a hand surgery as the result of a motorcycle crash when I was 20 also entirely out of pocket.  Never once did I think to myself that was the result of a broken system, nor did I ever think the entire insurance system should be overhauled to keep that from happening to me again.  Those were the results of my choices.

There are a lot of young people who could have been buying their own insurance coverage prior to the ACA who simply did not make it a priority.  Guess what?  There’s growing evidence many of those same young adults are electing to pay the penalty under ACA rather than purchase insurance.

[Gaspar]

The moment people were restricted as to who, when, and where they could purchase their health insurance, that is when the decline in quality and increase in price started. Of course state and federal government tried to fix this by limiting the market even further, until finally through supreme collusion the big insurers were able to lobby government to regulate and select what remained of their competition out of the market, leaving only a handful of players free of competitive price pressure.  The icing on the top is when these insurers were successful in forcing the consumer to purchase their product.  President Obama was just a tool.

Now, what they did not anticipate was how inept the federal government is at marketing and executing anything. That combined with an administration that literally thought they could wait until the very last minute to build the mechanics lead us to what we have now.  A glorious teachable moment.

About a week ago Aetna admitted that they were going to experience a loss from the plans under ACA, but that it would be manageable, anticipating that more people would sign up to avoid the penalties.  This week we hear that there are additional delays until 2016 and perhaps even more to be considered.  I am fairly sure that Aetna did not anticipate that.

No matter whether this ends up helping the insurance industry by weeding out the remaining smaller players or hurting them as a whole, the people that will ultimately suffer are the consumers as quality declines to meet demand at fixed cost.

I can see no way forward without the insurance industry requesting some form of bailout from the federal government to cover the cost of slow participation and delay.  I think we can probably expect that as the next change to the law that will take place independent of Congress.


It's the law!

[heironymouspasparagus]

Actually no.  My standard of living has improved by a very good margin over the last 40 years.

The reason I don’t agree, is I don’t see the point in revamping an entire system which did not need to be revamped as a whole. As previously mentioned there certainly were things the government could have done different to help those who don’t have proper coverage while keeping from meddling with coverage that did work for many Americans.

Exactly what I was getting at - your standard of living has gone up, while most people's has gone down - especially those in the lower 1/3...where the minimum wage has lost 30% in the last 40 years!

The entire system was in dramatic need of revamping.  Not surprising that the highest have so badly lost sight of the lowest such that they think everything was just fine, thank you!  Like management at McDonald's who keep telling their people how they should be saving money for the future.... on $8 an hour!  It's one of those "slap to the head - I coulda had a V8" moments!!  Gee, why didn't they think of that...??  Just can't imagine what they have been thinking all this time!   But I am sure they are comforted to know their fearless leader - CEO - got a massive raise last year - going from only 588 times the average McDonald's wage to right at 700 times the average McDonald's wage!  But he is more than worth it, of course....

[Conan71]

Exactly what I was getting at - your standard of living has gone up, while most people's has gone down - especially those in the lower 1/3...where the minimum wage has lost 30% in the last 40 years!

The entire system was in dramatic need of revamping.  Not surprising that the highest have so badly lost sight of the lowest such that they think everything was just fine, thank you!  Like management at McDonald's who keep telling their people how they should be saving money for the future.... on $8 an hour!  It's one of those "slap to the head - I coulda had a V8" moments!!  Gee, why didn't they think of that...??  Just can't imagine what they have been thinking all this time!   But I am sure they are comforted to know their fearless leader - CEO - got a massive raise last year - going from only 588 times the average McDonald's wage to right at 700 times the average McDonald's wage!  But he is more than worth it, of course....

You only have one gear, don't you?

While you rail on about economic injustice between people working what are considered temporary jobs at the low end of the job pool and the leaders of multi-billion dollar companies, you are completely oblivious to the average middle class family who has seen their health care costs go up dramatically as a result of the ACA.

There was no need to re-jigger the entire system to the point it has caused premium costs to escalate for middle class families who were barely making it while either increasing their deductibles or forcing them to select less coverage than they had before.  How can anyone call that necessary?  The middle class were completely forgotten in the ACA and there are still millions of Americans who will not qualify for coverage under ACA. 

Further, people on the lower end of the job scale watched as their hours have been cut so their employers didn't have to provide insurance benefits.  Other employers have simply asked for and gotten waivers to not have to provide coverage.

Please explain in detail how all this was necessary and some sort of a victory again?

[nathanm]

There was no need to re-jigger the entire system to the point it has caused premium costs to escalate for middle class families who were barely making it while either increasing their deductibles or forcing them to select less coverage than they had before.  How can anyone call that necessary?  The middle class were completely forgotten in the ACA and there are still millions of Americans who will not qualify for coverage under ACA. 

Never mind that the rate of both overall health care expenditures and premium increases for both employer and employee shares have been lower than trend for the past several years. You're complaining about increases that would have been larger in the absence of ACA (and the economy during the crisis years), at least up to this point. When was the last time you didn't see an increase in your premium for the same coverage? Maybe there's some gigantic premium increase coming for us all in the next couple of years like there was between 2005 and 2007 (for small group coverage, large firms were not as affected), but it hasn't happened yet, but somehow you talk like it has. Aside from the immediate post-crisis years, overall health care cost growth is lower than it has been since 1965.

Yes, some people have seen larger increases than others. That's how it has always been and will always be.

tl;dr: Much like the much ballyhooed hyperinflation, stagnation on Wall Street, the defeat of Barack Obama, and global cooling, the thing you are complaining about has yet to actually show up. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, we'll see.

[Conan71]

Never mind that the rate of both overall health care expenditures and premium increases for both employer and employee shares have been lower than trend for the past several years. You're complaining about increases that would have been larger in the absence of ACA (and the economy during the crisis years), at least up to this point. When was the last time you didn't see an increase in your premium for the same coverage? Maybe there's some gigantic premium increase coming for us all in the next couple of years like there was between 2005 and 2007 (for small group coverage, large firms were not as affected), but it hasn't happened yet, but somehow you talk like it has. Aside from the immediate post-crisis years, overall health care cost growth is lower than it has been since 1965.

Yes, some people have seen larger increases than others. That's how it has always been and will always be.

tl;dr: Much like the much ballyhooed hyperinflation, stagnation on Wall Street, the defeat of Barack Obama, and global cooling, the thing you are complaining about has yet to actually show up. Maybe it will, maybe it won't, we'll see.

You sure are putting a lot of faith in Jason Furman’s insistence that the ACA was responsible for the slowdown in cost growth, not the recession and sluggish recovery.  Rather he cherry-picked stats from the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation whose studies have generally been considered to provide very good analysis of the effects of the ACA.

For those who don’t have a clue who Jason Furman is, he is Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for the White House.  In other words, he works for Obama.  Naturally he is going to find an angle to help make the ACA look better than it is.

Obamacare Hasn’t Slowed The Growth of Health Care Costs – It’s The Economy, Stupid!

Obama administration advisors and supporters have been arguing that Obamacare and its grand designs to reshape health care have been a primary reason why health care costs have slowed.  Yet, the facts and data the real world – rather than the world of unreality in which people can keep their doctors and plans if they like them until they can’t – show that the old James Carville adage is still correct.  When it comes to the slowdown in health costs, it’s the economy, stupid.

This week, Jason Furman, head of the President’s council of economic advisers, penned a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Obamacare is slowing health inflation” in which he pointed to an annual report on health care spending from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to show that Obamacare has helped slow or reduce health costs.

The problem is the report does not say what Furman suggests it says.  In fact, the report actually acknowledged that the main driver of the temporary slowdown in the rate of health care growth was not Obamacare, but an economy shaken by the Great Recession.  Since World War II, the historical pattern is that the annual increase in the rate of health care spending slows a bit during periods of economic turmoil or recession, as consumers lose their health coverage or have fewer dollars to spend on care.

In a comprehensive study on this phenomenon, the Kaiser Family Foundation used statistical analysis to examine 50 years of health spending and economic trends.  The study found that the economy produces a major but delayed effect on the nation’s health spending, and attributes 77 percent of the slowdown due to poor economic conditions.  In other words, the economy is not a factor, but the factor.

The CMS report itself underscored that the slower-than-average annual growth in health care spending was attributable to a weak economy.  “The relative stability since 2009 primarily reflects the lagged impacts of the recent severe economic recession,” the report explained. Because millions of individuals lost their employer-provided health insurance or could not afford to keep their health coverage, “there was a slow recovery from private health insurance enrollment losses that occurred in 2008-2010” the analysts concluded.

This sentiment is echoed numerous times throughout the report, and is also consistent with the actuary’s analysis in January 2013. CMS analysts even went out of their way to be clear that the health care law was not a big driver in the small reduction in cost growth in 2012.  They write that provisions in “the Affordable Care Act … had a minimal impact on overall national health spending growth through 2012.”  In fact, Anne Martin, a CMS economist and the primary author of the study, pointed out to the press that we spent “more on health care between 2010 and 2012 due to the Affordable Care Act.”

Furman also purposefully chose to cherry-pick a few rosy examples to obscure the bigger picture.  For example, he says “the ACA is directly responsible for a substantial portion of slowdown in Medicare’s growth over the past few years.”  That claim sounds great, but the CMS report actually notes that the slowdown in 2012 was “driven primarily by a one-time payment reduction to skilled nursing facilities.”

Here’s another example.  Furman says the health care law “is helping to boost employment, lower deficits, and bolster wage growth.” While employment has made slow gains rebounding since the depths of the 2008-2009 recessions, millions of Americans are still struggling to find work or are underemployed.  Deficits have declined marginally, but that’s hardly because of the President.  The Administration is still advocating the same Big Government spending agenda that will slow our economy through debt and the demand for higher taxes.

Perhaps the most egregious citation sleight-of-hand is Furman’s attempted rebuttal of the claim that the health care law would be a “job-killer” by noting there have been “7.9 million private jobs added since the ACA.”  Any new job is a good thing but the economy has yet to demonstrate it is on track to fill jobs at a level that will reach full employment any time soon.

Moreover, the claim that the ACA will kill jobs is not mere rhetoric.   The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that, thanks to the ACA, if you like your job, there’s no guarantee you can keep it.  CBO found the health care law will reduce the workforce by 800,000 jobs over a decade.  And because the CBO does not conduct industry-specific assessments of potential job losses, the job loss tally could grow far higher.

Plus, headlines for months have warned of companies reducing workers’ hours and choosing not to hire new employees because of the law’s overly restrictive regulatory definition of a full-time employee as anyone who works 30 hours.  Other headlines have told the story of health care providers and medical device manufacturers who have had to lay off staff due to the law’s damaging cuts and taxes.

Finally, while Furman argued the CMS report demonstrates “important progress” in curbing runaway health spending, he ignores the coming flood of health spending and other mandates that are set to kick in this year.  Does the administration plan to say that cancelling people’s health insurance and setting up rationing boards is one way to curb costs?

But the big data point that has been missed is that last fall, the actuary’s office at CMS explained the ACA will actually increase health care costs moving forward.  They noted, “In 2014 the implementation of provisions of the [law] related to major coverage expansions are expected to accelerate health spending growth.”

The CBO also projects that under Obamacare, the annual Medicaid spending will grow at a rate of eight percent.  By 2022, annual Medicaid spending will approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars.  The total cost of the insurance coverage expansion under the law is $1.3 trillion dollars over the coming decade.

Time will tell who is correct but the American people have little reason to trust the administration’s predictions.  All sides want to slow health costs but history shows innovation, competition and free markets are far better at making scarce and costly goods and services more available and affordable than government.   The ACA is likely to once again confirm that the best way to make something expensive is for government to make it “affordable.”

[Gaspar]

It's come to this.  The new ads are all about being "taken care of" and living in Mom & Dad's basement.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6pAy5FpuWw[/youtube]

They are at least honest. No one is going to race to hire people with this mindset.  Hopefully they are all working on an english lit or gender studies major.

Dependency is awesome!

[rebound]

It's come to this.  The new ads are all about being "taken care of" and living in Mom & Dad's basement.

I'm a person that thinks we need the ACA, or at least something something similar.  But even to me, this almost looks like a parody ad.  Goodness, who is in charge of making these things?

[Gaspar]

I'm a person that thinks we need the ACA, or at least something something similar.  But even to me, this almost looks like a parody ad.  Goodness, who is in charge of making these things?

Haven't found on that doesn't look like a parody. They, however, are not.  This is apparently how they define their public.






They do, however, invite parody.

[nathanm]

Rather he cherry-picked stats from the study by the Kaiser Family Foundation whose studies have generally been considered to provide very good analysis of the effects of the ACA.

Sorry to disappoint, but I was cherry picking from KFF's latest cost report. You might note at no point did I say that the slowed growth in cost was due to the ACA, only that it has happened. Even if the slowing rate of increase isn't due to ACA, it irrefutably has yet to spark the massive cost increases that you and all the other naysayers predicted.

[Conan71]

Sorry to disappoint, but I was cherry picking from KFF's latest cost report. You might note at no point did I say that the slowed growth in cost was due to the ACA, only that it has happened. Even if the slowing rate of increase isn't due to ACA, it irrefutably has yet to spark the massive cost increases that you and all the other naysayers predicted.

Then what is this quote of yours all about, Nate:

“You're complaining about increases that would have been larger in the absence of ACA”

Secondly, you used data on overall healthcare costs from 2010 to 2013 conflate the point I made that there is plenty evidence published in the last few months that many in the middle class are now paying more for insurance or selecting lesser levels of coverage with higher deductibles than what they paid before the ACA roll-out fall-out last fall.

[Gaspar]

[Gaspar]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRKFwj8RHcM[/youtube]