I guess Jim has been left high and dry once again. Maybe I’ll google his posts on this subject and post the choicest words of wisdom.
The article notes that the narrative has moved on to “improving health”. But doing so by pushing a lot of people onto Medicaid and increasing substantially insurance costs for the rest? I think they’ll need a third talking point in a few years. Maybe it’ll be “fairer coverage” next.
Jim: “Premiums, deductibles, and health care costs may be going up but consumers are shielded from those increases by subsidies in the case of individuals and by having no idea about the process their employer goes through. As long as these cost increases are hidden from people, it doesn’t matter how high they go because Obamacare is the moral thing to do.”
Of course it costs money to give people insurance. That’s why Obamacare has its despised taxes and spending cuts, so that the net effect is to reduce the deficit slightly. Every month or so there’s another “OMG Obamacare is going to cost money” scare piece, but the bottom line remains the same: Obamacare more than pays for itself.
There have only been two significant changes to the Obamacare financial picture since the law was passed in 2010:
1) The Supreme Court let states opt out of Medicaid expansion. That’s terrible news for poor people in those states, but it means the law will be spending billions less on Medicaid expansion than was forecast.
2) Spending growth in health care has been at its lowest levels in decades, lower even than the GDP growth rate in 2012, so health care actually shrank as a fraction of the economy. This development has reduced the long-range spending projections for Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars.
I guess Jim has been left high and dry once again. Maybe I’ll google his posts on this subject and post the choicest words of wisdom.
The article notes that the narrative has moved on to “improving health”. But doing so by pushing a lot of people onto Medicaid and increasing substantially insurance costs for the rest? I think they’ll need a third talking point in a few years. Maybe it’ll be “fairer coverage” next.
Jim: “Premiums, deductibles, and health care costs may be going up but consumers are shielded from those increases by subsidies in the case of individuals and by having no idea about the process their employer goes through. As long as these cost increases are hidden from people, it doesn’t matter how high they go because Obamacare is the moral thing to do.”
Of course it costs money to give people insurance. That’s why Obamacare has its despised taxes and spending cuts, so that the net effect is to reduce the deficit slightly. Every month or so there’s another “OMG Obamacare is going to cost money” scare piece, but the bottom line remains the same: Obamacare more than pays for itself.
There have only been two significant changes to the Obamacare financial picture since the law was passed in 2010:
1) The Supreme Court let states opt out of Medicaid expansion. That’s terrible news for poor people in those states, but it means the law will be spending billions less on Medicaid expansion than was forecast.
2) Spending growth in health care has been at its lowest levels in decades, lower even than the GDP growth rate in 2012, so health care actually shrank as a fraction of the economy. This development has reduced the long-range spending projections for Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars.