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Surprise! Proposed Health Insurance Reform Will Raise Premiums
(Sorry… Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!)
Via Ed at Hot Air we find the Washington Post reporting the the law of unintended consequences is striking right and left on the health insurance reform front. The latest “revelation” (which won’t come as any surprise to the people who have been paying attention) is provided by accounting giant PriceWaterhouse Coopers, who reveal the shocking news that if the government begins dumping huge new taxes and fees on the insurance industry while reducing their customer base, rather than simply operating at a loss, they will wind up increasing the premiums they charge to families with existing coverage.
After months of collaboration on President Obama’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected.
The critique, coming one day before a critical Senate committee vote on the legislation, sparked a sharp response from the Obama administration. It also signaled an end to the fragile detente between two central players in this year’s health-care reform drama.
And what was the sharp response from the White House? Why, they quickly pointed out that “those guys” are a group of people outside of their area of expertise who “specialize in tax shelters.”
I see. So if you want to know about the final tab in a financial problem or how health insurance policies work, clearly the last people you’d want to talk to would be health insurance professionals or accountants. Brilliant!
Should something like the Baucus plan be passed – whether or not that tack on a disastrous “public option” in the consolidation process – the real pain and costs won’t be fully felt for several years, since everything is spaced out over such a broad period of time to hide the full impact. But those effects will come. And when they do, all of the plan’s supporters will find out what their efforts have wrought when the bill comes due… and it shows up in their own mailboxes.
55 Responses to “Surprise! Proposed Health Insurance Reform Will Raise Premiums”
disagree DJ. Single payer successfully lowers costs and increases performance worldwide.
You have no data points, GD. Show me a country that adopted a single payer system and saw costs fall and performance rise.
J
Your right, we were inundated by all those Republican cost cutting amendments. No wonder nothing has been done.
“Blah, now you are just playing with semantics an attempt to talk down to me.”
I've been doing nothing of the kind.
” Insurance isn't health care…yeah I know. Which is why I would rather see the health care insurance industry blown away and replaced with single payer….and they can raise my taxes to do it.”
That's no doubt part of the motive behind any and all “play or pay” and “mandatory participation” details of any legislation that is forthcoming — it gets everyone used to paying, i.e., being effectively (if not by name or legally) taxed to pay for everyone's health care. The moment participation and payment is made a requirement is when the people are starting to be “trained” to pay taxes for universal care.
“Side note again…while I would prefer single payer, I argue for a public option along with private because I know single payer will never happen
”
The obvious choice the Dems faced now was incrementalism of one kind or another (be it Universality Lite, which is what the “public option” crowd-out strategy is, or a piecemeal “iterative” process where only portions of the population at any time are made beneficiaries, but all of them at once — children, the poor, the uninsured, the unemployed, people between ages 50-65, Medicaid, VA, all the obvious groups of choice). The public option strategy is seeking universalism, but indirectly and less immediately than instant “Medicare for All” (“single-payer”), at which the public would recoil currently. (In no small part due to the lib Dems' track record so far this year!)
Of course, Cornyn opposes any form of governmental health care…except his own.
Great letter from a Dallas resident in this morning's hometown newspaper:
“Cornyn's great health care plan
Located inside the U.S. Capitol is a little-known medical facility called the Office of the Attending Physician. For a low annual premium of only $503, members of Congress have access to the finest doctors and specialists the U.S. Navy has to offer.
There are no additional fees. That's considerably less than I pay every month for health insurance with a $7,000 deductible.
Because Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is an outspoken critic of any sort of government-run health care, I called his office and was shocked to learn that he uses the OAP.
For a lawmaker to oppose government-run health care while benefiting from the finest government-run health care program our nation has to offer is the very definition of hypocrisy.”
But, of course, Cornyn is pushing for the “greater good” for our nation