Things aren't happening the way we were told they would:
Even a well-designed law can have unintended effects that worsen the problems it was meant to solve—and a slipshod law like Obamacare threatens to cause serious damage. UPS, for instance, has decided to stop offering insurance to employee spouses who can get insurance from their own employer. The company cites the new costs imposed by Obamacare, including:
-Coverage for dependent children up to age; regardless of whether they are enrolled in school, are married, or (beginning 2014) have coverage available from their own employer;
-Removal of lifetime and annual benefit limits;
-Fees for comparative effectiveness research; and
-Fees to help fund the public exchanges.
UVA officials announced a similar policy yesterday, also referencing the costs Obamacare will add to the university’s health care budget.
This may not seem like a big deal—either way, the spouses will be insured—but it points to some potential problems. For now, UPS and other companies are continuing to cover unemployed spouses, but given their anxiety about steep costs in the era of Obamacare, they could concievably soon decide to exclude them.
This could put more pressure on the exchanges, ramping up the number of older people receiving subsidized plans in the individual market. But what the exchanges need to work is more “young invincibles”, not more middle-aged spouses kicked off employee plans. And here the incentives seem to be working the opposite way. Wonkblog reports that 7.8 million young adults gained insurance in the last three years because of Obamacare’s provision allowing them to stay on their parents’ plan until they’re 26. In other words, as Obamacare’s costs force the exchanges’ pool to age, another provision removes more young people from the individual market by letting them stay on their parents’ insurance.
The only way Obamacare can sustain itself is if healthy young folks (who won't use the benefits) sign up in large numbers.
They aren't.
Instead, more middle-aged, likely-to-use-benefits folks are being dumped into the exchanges (off their current plans), which will cause an even bigger strain on the system, causing a more rapid implosion of costs.
Social Security was initially designed to work, by having a large pool of contributors paying for a smaller pool of users. Obamacare was supposed to work in the same fashion. We are already seeing signs it isn't.
It's too bad the Left rammed this through Congress without reading the bill, or discussing different scenarios of what might happen. It's also too bad that the American voters were warned of this by the Right, but chose to ignore those warnings.
Now we all pay the price.
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