You can keep it. Unless we don’t like your plan:
Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers.
Were people really stupid enough to believe his lies during the campaign?
On the plus side, “repeal the bill” will have a lot more resonance this fall.
[Sunday morning update]
The good news just keeps on coming:
This year Ms. Watts estimates that changes made in response to the health law will add an extra 2 to 3 percent in cost increases, pressuring employers to engage in even more cost-sharing with employees — whether through higher premiums, co-payments or other out-of-pocket costs.
Mr. Weaver also reports increased interest by employers in high-deductible insurance plans. “They’ve been effective in managing costs,” he said.
You know, someone just a little smarter than Nancy Pelosi (i.e., almost everyone) would have been able to figure out what was in the bill without having to pass it.
There might be presidential administrations that are more mendacious and deceptive, but the Obama administration is astonishing in how quickly, soundly, and brazenly it “rewards” with abuse those who supported it.
They still believe his lies now. Yes, some people are really, really stupid.
As an aside, if half of employees (might be better or worse since we’re not looking directly at numbers of employees and people affected) lose their job-related insurance, how is that going to reduce the uninsured in the country? Looks to me like we’ll see a large rise in the number of uninsured instead. As expected, I might add.
Obama is totally going to pay off my mortgage! I still believe!
Oh wait. I don’t have a mortgage.
See??? I told you!!!
“Looks to me like we’ll see a large rise in the number of uninsured instead. As expected, I might add.”
But you don’t understand. Single payer, or at least a public option is what we needed all along, and we would have gotten it if it weren’t for obstructionist Republicans, who would not cross over to make up for Democrats in Congress who fear for their jobs from voters who have been brainwashed by the Insurance Lobby and yell a lot at those Town Hall meetings.
The political realities are that they had to reform the system of private-sector health insurance to let it fall under its own weight so the political system can be brought around to the correct outcome
Every time the state nannies step into something – it gets worse. Repeal Obamacare NOW! Let’s prevent further damage to the country.
Used to be that the Republicans cut taxes and spending.
Used to be that Democrats raised taxes and spending.
Now they both just raise spending and borrow.
If only we had known this would happen! oh wait…
Maybe any minute Chris Gerrib will show up to explain how we misunderstood the narrative in the first place, and this was always the plan, and it’s for our own good anyway.
“we misunderstood the narrative in the first place, and this was always the plan, and it’s for our own good anyway.”
Hey, I thought I had already explained it. I was walking a very narrow line between snark and giving HCR the benefit-of-the-doubt.
Things would be much, much worse without the legislation. It is kind of like the neighbor with some ugly, ugly “sculpture” on the front lawn. “Hey Jim, what is that thing for?” “Paul, it is for keeping the giraffes from browsing my trees and ruining them.” “Giraffes? I haven’t seen any giraffes around here apart from the time I went to the zoo . . . ” “Yeah, the thing is working!”
Invoke me and I will come…
First, the government report cited first is a draft. The 83-page report is concerned about setting regulations for grandfathering health insurance plans. I think the more relevant quote from the report (pdf link) is However, approximately two-thirds of the employers that made such a change in 2009 could have achieved the same cost-control objective and remained grandfathered by making changes in other cost-sharing parameters or in the employer share of the premium. In short, the 51% number is a high-end number. Additionally, just because a plan isn’t grandfathered doesn’t mean it is completely scrapped.
There were two points to having a public option. Point 1 was to actually cover those who couldn’t afford it. Point 2 was to provide a low-cost option to employers, forcing insurance costs down.
Chris G,
The point is, the Won told people time and time again, that if they liked their plan they could keep it. That is a lie.
Of course it was. To anyone with an understanding of economics, it was obvious the moment he said it. The whole point of Obamacare is to destroy any remnants of a genuine market and replace it with a command-and-control system of cross-subsidization for people who were previously “uninsurable.” Anyone whose plan doesn’t sufficiently cover those subsidies must obviously lose their plan.
There were two points to having a public option. Point 1 was to actually cover those who couldn’t afford it. Point 2 was to provide a low-cost option to employers, forcing public option insurance on everyone through artificial price controls
costs down.FIFY
Leland,
I always wondered how that was going to work. If you take people out of the private insurance risk pool (through the public option), you are increasing the cost of insuring whoever is still in the system. How does that decrease costs, except through (as you said) mandated price controls?
As an anarchist staunchly in favor of free and open markets, I like the Obama plan because it will have the deirable effect of utterly eliminating employer provided healthcare. The pre-obama system was quasi-socialist. Tax subsidies and state mandates controlled it. Its single biggest flaw was removing the consumer from the bargaining table with first dollar coverage. My biggest hope is that the bill remains law long enough to finish off employer provided healthcare and is replaced with… nothing.
A rational and competitive health insurance marketplace would not provide first dollar coverage for healthcare. All insurance plans would be high deductible plans. If doctors had to negotiate directly with patients who were paying with cash, most of the time, costs would be lower and stay contained.
Chris L. – the public option reduces costs by eliminating the need for private insurance to subsidize “free” health care given to the non-insured. It also provides an alternative for companies that find the private market too costly.
Two small businesses that I know of had employees survive non-lifestyle cancers. After that, the companies had huge insurance costs and a great deal of difficulty getting coverage. The owner of one of them told me he’d gladly pay for his employees to be on a public option.
Jardinero1 – my problem with the “bargaining” model is that, when I’m lying in a stretcher, I may not be conscious enough to bargain. When I’ve gotten a diagnosis of cancer, I may lack leverage with which to bargain. This is why I expect my insurance company to bargain for me.
Chris, I sell group health among other things. Your small business story does not ring true if these businesses had group plans. They can find coverage easily, just not at a price they can afford.
The scary bargaining scenarios you describe are actually a consequence of group health insurance and Medicare taking over the bargaining and payment in healthcre delivery. One reason doctors swear the hippocratic oath is to deal with the contingencies you describe. Before the advent of group health insurance in the forties, actually well until the advent of Medicare, a big chunk of any doctor’s practice as well as most hospital’s was charity work. Doctors, mostly, earned a vey meager living and hospitals were not considered a business. One reason LBJ got the AMA to endorse Medicare setting rates was because Medicare would eliminate the biggest chunk of charity work which was the care of the elderly.
It sure could. All non-grandfathered plans must mirror what’s in the exchange, which is dictated by Kathleen Sebelius’s minions. You could get lucky, or you could get screwed. Either way it’s a far cry from being able to keep it if you like it.
Jardinero1 – They can find coverage easily, just not at a price they can afford. If they can’t afford the coverage, then it’s not “easily available.”
I am glad to see you explain part of the problem with US health care costs – the profit motive of doctors. Perhaps if doctors were to take a smaller payout, costs would go down. And if the doctors are faced with a choice of take less money or take no money (because their patients can’t afford them) I suspect they’ll take less money.
Chris, price and availabilty are two completely different things, though they are inter-related. Rolls Royces are readily available though I can’t afford one.
You are incorrect in saying that the profit motive is what is driving healthcare costs. What you are calling healthcare costs are more accurately called healthcare prices. Healthcare prices are a function of supply and demand.
In the current system the consumer function and the payer function have been separated. You have a consumer who doesn’t have to pay and wants everything it takes to get well and a separate payer who is statutorily bound to pay for what the consumer requests. This pushes the demand curve way, way out. When you push the demand curve out prices rise.
The only way to lower healthcare prices is to increase supply or reduce demand. It’s vastly simpler to reduce demand by getting rid of the current system and replace it with nothing. Quite a few doctors will have to change their lifestyles and some will leave the profession but without first dollar coverage prices will come down and society will be better off.
Very little else will change because the current system of employer provided health insurance and medicare for the elderly has done very little to improve health in our society. The best indicator of health, longevity, has barely moved in the last forty years. What tiny improvement in longevity we have seen is, in large part, due to improvements in trauma care. Otherwise, the current system has done nothing but make healthcare hugely more expensive.
One other thing, first dollar coverage creates a huge moral hazard. If people had to pay, out of pocket, the first ten or twenty thousand of their medical expenses, every year, you can be sure that most of them would make better lifestyle choices.