Yeah, sure, CA is going to love Obamacare

by Chris Reed | August 19, 2013 6:00 am

There has been a striking lack of common sense among advocates of Obamacare.

First example: It was completely predictable that allowing companies to not provide health insurance to employees who worked less than 30 hours a week would lead companies to broadly shift to part-time employment. In any industry in which advanced or even moderate job skills aren’t necessary — in which employee turnover is no big deal — it makes far more financial sense to have 80 workers at 25 hours a week than 50 workers at 40 hours a week. None of the 80 workers would have employer-paid health insurance in the former scenario; in the latter, 50 would. Duh.

The result, per NBC News, is stunning: the Labor Department says 97 percent of the jobs created in the U.S. over the last six months were for part-time work. The disincentive to provide full-time jobs is so huge that the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers and other labor union leaders recently wrote in a letter to the White House that it was a threat to “destroy the foundation of the 40-hour workweek that is the backbone of the middle class.”

Obama expects ‘enormous success’ in Golden State

Now we see another example of a simple lack of common sense with more than a touch of delusion. This is from a Politico[1] story about Obamacare’s implementation and how it’s been resisted by some states and embraced by others:

“[T]he political mood is very different in the states that are trying to implement it, [an administration] official said, and there will be ‘enormous successes’ in the states that give the law a genuine effort — ‘and there will be many of those,’ citing California, Maryland, New York and Nevada.”

Yeah, sure, Californians are going to love Obamacare. Avik Roy of Forbes’ number-crunching shows how hard-hit one economically vulnerable group is going to be:

“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. (That’s 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[2], the average cost of the five cheapest plans was only $92. In other words, for the average 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.

“Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261. But on eHealthInsurance, the average cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.

“For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double.”

A $2,000 deductible? That will be embraced? Really?

Oh, this is just going to be HUGELY popular.

Wait — there’s more. Under California’s Silver Obamacare option, which officials expect to be one of the most used, the annual deductible is $2,000.

So young, healthy Californians who average a trip or two or three a year to the doctor will have to cover all the costs — and also pay premiums that are way higher than they used to have to pay.

They are just going to LOVE the Affordable Care Act.

No, they’re not. Duh.

 

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2013/08/19/yeah-sure-ca-is-going-to-love-obamacare/

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