Category Archives: regulation

A Cost of Obamacare

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Anecdotal, certainly, but anecdotes are data, and they can accumulate into trends.  This one comes from Fox News‘ “Kelly File.”

One late-middle-aged family with two college-age children were paying $500/mo for a health insurance plan that suited their needs.  President Barack Obama’s Obamacare, though, termed that plan inadequate and so illegal: the family got one of those ubiquitous cancelation letters.  The new health “insurance” plan they got runs them $1,250/mo.

With that explosion in their pocketbook, this family did what any American family does and what the Obama administration refuses to do seriously: they budgeted.

“That’s actually a little bit more than my monthly mortgage on my home, so you can imagine that you have to start thinking about, you know, where is the extra money coming to pay for the policy,” the mother said.

They made a list of things that had to go in order to afford the new plan: charitable donations, extra mortgage payments, “splurges” such as more frequent haircuts, and so on.

Courtesy of Obama and his Obamacare, charity is hurt—that should be a government welfare program, anyway, eh?—accelerated debt pay down is hurt (isn’t that how we got into this mess, excessive debt?), less money to spend on the private economy, ….

The mother added, with considerably more economics acumen than Obama,

…maybe not eating out as much, not going to the movies, that directly affects small business in our community[.]

There Are Worse Names to be Called

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Recall the Bowie State University Obamacare kerfuffle [emphasis in the original].

Bowie State University has suspended offering health insurance for domestic students for the 2013-2014 academic year.  Due to new requirements of the Affordable Care Act which will go into effect on January 1, 2014, the cost of insurance for domestic students will increase to approximately $1800 per year [from $54/semester].  If you were covered by the university health insurance last Spring 2013, your policy will expire on August 29, 2013.

Earlier this month, BSU student Eugene Craig objected via the BSU newspaper, The Bulldog Collegian; his article had this closer:

Dr [Rita, BSU Wellness Center Director] Wutoh made the announcement that the university would not be providing coverage for students this academic year, and that they could obtain insurance through the Maryland Health Insurance exchange.  I guess if you like your coverage you really can’t keep it as millions of Americans have been finding out over the last month.  As the plan the University has provided for many semester is considered to be out of compliance with the rules that HHS released for Colleges and Universities the University is forced to send everyone to the Maryland Exchange.  This is one sure way to make sure those “Invincible Millennials” are on the exchanges to make sure the cost of the ACA is balanced out.

Craig since has been roundly criticized, including by school administrators and via his Facebook page.  There, alumni (!) are calling him the “wanna be grandson of Clarence Thomas.”

Worse names, indeed.

Another Implication

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…of Obamacare.

Unlike drug addicts, alcoholics, or the obese—all of whom represent higher-than-average medical costs—smokers are the only such group with a pre-existing condition that ObamaCare penalizes. It allows insurance companies to charge smokers up to 50 percent more than non-smokers for an identical policy….

There are a couple of things about this.  One is singling out a particular group for special treatment.  This is what the Obama administration does routinely, though.  Equality under law simply is inconceivable to President Barack Obama and his cronies.

The other is that “[Obamacare] allows insurance companies to charge” bit.  Big Government knows best.  Heaven forfend that a market solution, with individual Americans making our own decisions in an environment where businesses compete for customers without government interference, should be allowed.  Likely at lower cost to us, to boot.

And this double whammy especially hurts the poor, whom Obama studiously ignores in his drive to…deal with…the middle class.  The same high premiums hammer these poor—their low incomes are a major part of why they’re in that “47 million” who don’t have insurance, in the first place—but the subsidies for which they’re eligible cannot be used on the smoker surcharge, which is the mechanism by which the insurer is permitted to plus up the basic premium.

For instance, 64-yr-old non-smoker can get a Silver health “insurance” plan for $9,000 (!) per year.  A 64-yr-old non-smoker will pay $13,600 for the same plan.  Both non-smoker and smoker of an income level can get a subsidy for the $9,000 basic premium, but the smoker is on his own for those additional $4,600.

An Implication of Obamacare

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…that’s little talked about.  It follows, though, Obamacare’s segmentation of “insurance” coverage into high-payers—the young, who are poor—and the low-payers—the elderly, who are well established—and into metal groups differentiated solely by what per centage of costs will be covered after deductibles have been consumed for the year.

The implication is this, a buried one-liner in a Wall Street Journal article:

…the health law bars insurers from taking medical history into account when setting prices.

Imagine that.  Underwriters, when designing an “insurance” policy intended to transfer health-related risk, aren’t allowed to incorporate questions of health into their risk assessments.

Hmm….