10 thoughts on “ObamaCare”

  1. What’s Happening to Obamacare’s PPOs?

    Consumers buying insurance on the exchanges are increasingly finding themselves limited to more restrictive plans—narrow-network health maintenance organizations and exclusive-provider organizations—which offer extremely limited coverage when they want to visit out-of-network medical providers. And many patients aren’t thrilled. “I feel deserted,” one cancer patient, suddenly cut off from long-time doctors, told the Houston Chronicle this month. “This is my life we’re talking about,” another told the paper earlier this year.

    Will Democrats Sink the ACA?

    Among Democrats, there’s at least one part of the ACA that’s unpopular: the law’s so-called Cadillac tax. This provision, which is supposed to take effect in 2018, taxes plans offered by employers that pass a certain threshold: individual plans that cost over $10,200 annually or family plans that exceed $27,500. The total amount that a company pays over those thresholds for is taxed at 40 percent. Hillary Clinton—as well as some unions—have come out against this tax.

    In Bloomberg, Peter Orszag, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, argues that this Democratic opposition to tax is the “biggest legislative threat the Affordable Care Act has faced in the past five years.” . . .

    It would be deeply ironic if a Democratic initiative were to so deeply undermine the ACA. We don’t know whether Orszag is correct that the tax would successfully bring down costs, nor do we know whether eliminating the tax will sink the law. It’s certainly true, at the very least, that Democrats would need a clear way to make up the revenue lost by the tax, and the debate over the best place to find that money would likely be contentious. And, of course, it’s by no means guaranteed that those Democrats who oppose the tax will manage to undo it, even were Clinton to become President.

    But regardless of how that all shakes out, this story shows that a big and controversial provision of the ACA has yet to implemented, and that stakes around its implementation are high. The debate over the ACA—no less over American health care as a whole—isn’t over. By a long shot.

    Related: ObamaCare Premiums Just Keep Rising.

    I see a lot of my Facebook friends — especially youngish single ones — complaining about rising premiums and absurdly high deductibles. The GOP could make an issue of this, if it were smart. It could likely even target these people using social media. . . .

    1. And isn’t the Cadillac Tax designed to lower the threshold for what is considered extravagant coverage and increases taxes on them as time goes on?

      I really want that left in. I want people whose employers pay for their insurance to feel the pain. Really tired of arguing with people about how awesome Obamacare is when they do not even live under it.

      1. Yes, the Cadillac Tax increases, IIRC, at the general rate of inflation, which is lower than the rate of _insurance premium_ inflation. It may be a different index than what I wrote, but it’s designed, like the AMT, to trap more and more people over time.

        And yeah, I think they should leave it like that. The unions, in particular, should suffer for supporting Obama”Care”. I guess they though the CT would be repealed before it bit them.

  2. Most Americans realized they were suckers after the details of the ACA bill started appearing in 2009.

    And 53% are not just suckers, but idiots for having voted in a Progressive for the second time.

  3. (work with me on this, people)

    Rand you are so wrong about the arithmetic on the ACA. It is a functioning program, which means it is working just fine as intended, which means Senator Sanders is completely wrong about the need for Single Payer. Right, Jim? Isn’t it? C’mon, back me up here . . .

  4. Well, everyone should be happy that rather than get a direct bailout, insurance companies are getting a tax holiday.

  6. Only tangentially on topic: I keep seeing the assertion that Obamacare can’t be repealed unless something is put in its place. If people are far more unhappy with the way things are now than they were before Obamacare, then does it not follow that simply returning to the laws as they were before the ACA would be a viable alternative?

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