28
Feb
2014
Can’t Make ObamaCare Without Breaking Some Households
My latest at Mises Canada. In addition to being wrong on the economics of it, our progressive supporters of ObamaCare display a remarkable callousness to the actual human beings involved.
You’ve missed a point on the one million Krugman dismisses. They aren’t swing voters.
They care more about human beings because they are willing to support coercive measures against human beings.
Where did these alleged economists think the money was going to come from for their sloppier insurance?
Or I guess since they are still math deniers where do the think it is coming from?
Who else is getting memos from their employer making sure if you are part-time that they are part-time. I can almost assure you Paul Krugman is.
Rule of thumb for interventionists, if 100% of anyone you communicate with are experiencing something, it’s prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrobably a thing.
Andrew not sure if this is where you were going with it, but I used your comment here to suggest (on Twitter) that Krugman just announced he was switching to part-time employment because of ObamaCare.
That would be funny, but all I’m referring to is universities have a lot of part-time workers and are terrible at e-mail management. I feel sure he is aware of this feature of aca.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/fearless-man-bravely-ventures-out-into-us-economy,29661/
They certainly need a few more guest economic reporters.
andrew’ wrote: “Where did these alleged economists think the money was going to come from for their sloppier insurance?
Or I guess since they are still math deniers where do the think it is coming from?”
OBama.guv said the entire healthcare system was going to become efficient due to reduced paperwork, etc. etc.
So people( pundits, economist and other blowhards) were stupid enough to believe intervention would reduce prices, without subsidy(theft).
“Krugman wants to know how the healthcare.gov fiasco is affecting estimates of how many uninsured people won’t be able to get coverage. The answer is, one million people. ”
I agree with the other points in your post but this one seems a bit harsh. If one of the stated aims of ACA was to reduced the number of uninsured by 14 million and they only achieved 13 million you would have to say it was at least a qualified successive on its own terms. I get that some of 13 million may well see themselves as worse of now they are mandated to buy insurance but that is not Krugman’s point.
Don’t mellow Bob’s harsh!
Transformer, what I’m saying is that the stipulated *reason* for one million people currently lacking health insurance, is that the idiots in the White House couldn’t get their website to work.
So you’d think at the very least Krugman would say nothing about it, or better yet would say, “This is extremely troubling. My gosh, hundreds of people might actually DIE because of this–if I take my own previous rhetoric seriously. Even though this is an example of all-too-familiar government incompetence, I still think it was right to pass ObamaCare.”
Yet he didn’t do that. Instead he said “oh noes” as if a million people lacking health insurance was no big whoop.
So, whether we’re looking at individual horror stories or stats of a million people, Krugman is cracking jokes and thinks the important thing is the political success of ObamaCare for the Democrats.
It used to be you had to pretend to be embarrassed at being caught in lies. Now they are proud of it.
Besides, the whole 13MM number is completely bogus.
What we know is:
4MM have signed up through the exchanges. We don’t know how many of those have actually paid a premium, estimates are between 50-75%.
4MM lost coverage as a result of having “junk” plans.
So that is basically a 1MM net loss as a result of ACA, taking the high number.
(It’s also safe to say that for those who were forced into an ACA plan, premiums and deductibles have gone up, and choices of doctors, hospitals etc.were reduced.)
7MM signed up for Medicaid. It is estimated that half of those were renewals or people who didn’t realize they were eligible under the existing law (signups in states that didn’t expand), meaning 3.5MM net new as a result of ACA.
An unknown number of 21-26 year olds obtained coverage by being added to parent’s plan. Let”s be generous and say that’s another 1.5 MM net new as a result of ACA.
So my math tells me that’s an overall 4MM net gain, about 9MM short of 13MM.
So the way I see it that all of the net new people with health insurance are because of expanded Medicaid and expanded “parent plan” coverage. The private health insurance “markets” racket has resulted so far in a net loss.
There was no need for a complicated health law to make that happen.
In fact, if they had just expanded Medicaid and added the “26 year old” provision, they would have had 5MM net new, a 1MM improvement, plus none of the anxiety for the poor folks who were forced onto the exchanges.
And the pain is far from over. Employer mandate, taxes on “Cadillac” plans, fines, all that stuff is yet to kick in.
I foresee a lot more broken eggs, but no omelette, unfortunately.
I remember the stated goal of ACA was 100% coverage. Quibbling over the 1 million difference between 13 and 14 million kind of ignores the politics that at the time and in some form or another said that there were 45 million uninsured.
Speaking of inflation, just look at insurance premiums, communications, and nearly every other requirement of a modern society. Prices just keep going up every month. Not 1 darn thing in my life has maintained a level price, not 1. Not to mention the price reduction of several goods and services that otherwise would have been recognized. Just admit it folks, this system of slavery REQUIRES perpetually escalating prices in excess of 2% just to compute. Prices will never ever go down again. Never.
I do not care what CPI LIE says.
The irony, of course, is that a basic callousness towards a small group of people is the exact thing that the progressives accused all opponents of Obamacare of in the first place.
Back in 2009, if you would have said, “Sure, our current system leaves a small percentage of people without insurance, but that’s just the price we have to pay to enjoy the benefits of a free market system” you would be thought of as a despicable human being who is more committed to ideology than actually helping people.
Yet now, we’re routinely told that rising premiums, lower quality, and yes, even death panels, are “just the price we have to pay in order to help the poor.” And yet, no outrage…