How’s Obamacare working out for CA?

June 2, 2013

By John Seiler

How’s Obamacare working out? On her Web site, state Senate Speaker Pro Tem Nora Campos, D-San Jose, wrote:

“Much of our focus, early in 2013, will be on health care. The legislature will work with Governor Jerry Brown to implements the federal Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] in ways that make the most sense for California.”

A May 31 Sacramento Bee editorial enthused:

“Californians can breathe a sigh of relief over a crucial first step in implementing health care reform. State officials last week unveiled the health plans and premium rates that will be available under the California health exchange. They show the market is working as intended — actually better.

“Thirty-three health plans — including some from out of state — competed to offer plans for the uninsured who don’t get insurance through an employer, through Medicare (the federal insurance program for the elderly) or Medi-Cal (the federal-state partnership providing insurance for lower-income Americans). Thirteen plans were selected….

“The competition has brought the rates lower than expected — even for so-called ‘young invincibles.’ Some experts have worried that younger people would choose to pay the penalty ($95 or 1 percent of income in 2014, and increasing in later years) rather than buy insurance.”

“Young invincibles” are healthy kids who take a chance they won’t need medical care except in an emergency. Then they’ll just pick up the tab themselves, or go on welfare to get government health care.

It’s crucial to get them into the system paying high premiums because then, as with Social Security and Medicare, they become the slaves that pay for the older folks who are less healthy and run up costs for the system when they get sick.

That means the youngsters will have less money of their own. So they’ll run up even more college debt. Or they won’t be able to save enough money to start new companies. America will continue to fall behind the rest of the world in technological growth, as such companies founded by youngsters as Facebook, Microsoft and Apple never get formed in the future.

Reality

The reality from Forbes:

“Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. ‘These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,’ boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange. But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.

“One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own.

“This problem will be especially acute when the law’s main provisions kick in on January 1, 2014, leading many to worry about health insurance ‘rate shock.’…

“Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters.”

Such as the Bee.

Forbes explains:

“Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange.

“ ‘The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,’ the state said in a press release, ‘ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.’

“That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. ‘This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,’ exulted Peter Lee.

“Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical.

“If you’re a 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges is the catastrophic plan, which costs an average of $184 a month. (By ‘average,’ I mean the median monthly premium across California’s 19 insurance rating regions.)

“The next cheapest plan, the ‘bronze’ comprehensive plan, costs $205 a month. But in 2013, on eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH), the median cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92.

“In other words, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.”

Despite the writings of the purblind editorialists at the Bee, Obamacare keeps being revealed as a crony capitalist scheme to enrich Big Pharma, Big Hospital, Big Insurance and Big Medicne at the expense of everyone, especially young people.