Tag Archives: economics

Obamacare, Take Two

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…aspirin, and call your doctor in the morning. If you can find one.

Actually, this Take Two is an Obamacare second year look. I went to healthcare.gov to see what was what, after I’d done a couple of comparisons last year.

The good news is that the Web site works much more smoothly now. The bad news is that the Web site works much more smoothly now.

Taking advantage of that smoothness, I looked at some Gold plans offered in my area. As before, I selected Gold because that coverage comes closest to what I get through my wife’s employer. The failures of these plans still exist: coverages I don’t want and don’t need are forced on me (I told my doctor at my last annual that I wanted my IUD. I was paying for it, and I wanted what I was paying for. I told her that it didn’t matter where she stuck it, it was likely to fail, and I’d be back in a couple of weeks for a replacement. She chuckled over that.)

Every Gold plan offered—all seven of them—had premiums plus deductible plus out-of-pocket caps totaling in the neighborhood of $17k per year. Every year. I’d pay all of premiums and deductibles before any plan paid a single penny of my expenses, and I’d still have those caps. Certainly, that’s down from last year’s nearly 27 stacks, but still…. Those costs also are for only one person, even though I’d told ObamaMart that I was looking for coverage for two.

I can’t get a Catastrophic plan in my area anymore. Recall that last year, I could get one that—after premiums plus deductible plus out-of-pocket caps—would generously pay 60% of my costs. No more.

I looked at the down-rated Silver plans, too; there are 11 offered in my area now. Total costs ran from $19k to $23k. For coverage of one person.

There are 7 Bronze plans for me; these cost in the neighborhood of $20k. ‘Course, the folks buying these are likely to be subsidized, so they won’t be paying those 20 stacks. You and I will. In addition to the $17k-$23k (depending on our plan) we’ll pay for our own coverage.

It just doesn’t get any better than this. At least while Obamacare is in the way.

Taxing Europe

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Speaking at a gathering of the Group of 20 major economies in Brisbane, the former prime minister of Luxembourg defended his position, saying a lack of cooperation between European Union member states created a system where “very low taxation of companies” was legal. “Things of that kind could happen because of the divergency between national tax legislation,” he said.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that like he thought low taxes were a bad thing. Leaving more money in the hands of the folks who earned it, instead of transferring it to Government Know Betters is a bad thing.

Contra our own President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party, I don’t want us to be more like Europe.

What’s next for ObamaCare?

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That’s the title of a Jim Angle article on Fox News.com. RTWT, but what interests me are a couple of comments he quoted in his piece.

The first comment is this one, by John Goodman, a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute:

[I]if you repeal it, you’re going to have to replace it with something. And repeal and replace is just another way of saying we’re going to change ObamaCare into something different and better.

Of course. Free market solutions would work. “Change Obamacare” into…? Sure, if keeping the name proves tactically sound, that’s fine. Calling white black in order to get the black replaced with something better may be politically necessary, but it still won’t be black anymore. I’d prefer a better collection of names for the collection of smaller policies (rather than one large policy) that should replace this monstrosity, but that can come later.

Then there’s this bigger bit of nonsense from Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center:

[Y]ou need to not only say you’re against the ACA…, but you’re going to need to have a replacement plan to show people you have a better way of providing people with health insurance coverage.

That’s partly right. The upcoming Republican Congress does need to have a replacement plan. However, it’s not government’s job to “provid[e] people with health insurance coverage.” It’s the job of the market place and the private citizens interacting in it to provide people with the coverage they want—including no coverage at all. Government has no role in this whatsoever beyond its role of ensuring an honest market place.

Another Installment of the Obama Recovery

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The number of part-time workers who’d rather work full time remains heavily depressed. Here are some numbers, via Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal.

  • 3 million full-time workers hired just this year, but the number of full-time workers is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007
  • number of workers who are part time for economic reasons is 4.5% of the civilian workforce, down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession

Yeah, we’re doing wonderfully well. Sure.