Obamacare’s many failures are well known – higher premiums, higher deductibles, fewer insurers, fewer providers, and far fewer takers than predicted – but Democrats in Congress are doubling down. The Build Back Better bill would make expanded Obamacare subsidies – meant for COVID relief – permanent. CBO analysis shows the bill would throw three million people off their employer plans which are generally better for people with preexisting conditions than Obamacare. People with employer coverage have more doctors and hospitals from which to choose and pay less out of pocket to receive care from them. The price tag of the new subsidies is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The expanded subsidies would incentivize insurers to raise premiums because the subsidies go up dollar for dollar with premium increases. Handing insurers a blank check like this is crazy and will contribute to inflation.
CBO also found, under the bill, millions would leave employer plans and unsubsidized individual coverage. That number and more would go into Medicaid and Obamacare. If you net it all out, there would be 4.1 million more covered in some way, but at a cost to taxpayers of more than $18,000 per newly insured per year by 2031. Does that sound sustainable to you? It doesn’t to me.
There are other problems with expanding the subsidies permanently. It has been shown people earning higher incomes would benefit disproportionately and the bill would substitute government spending for private spending on healthcare, which is the wrong direction given all the problems government spending on healthcare causes. The bill would make expanded subsidies available to the unemployed, reducing their incentive to return to work. Employers have warned that another provision of the bill would force companies to pay a greater share of health coverage premiums for their employees which would disproportionately affect companies with lots of low-wage employees.
Why anyone would want to double down on Obamacare is beyond me, given its record of abject failure. In addition to its many failures noted above, who could forget the still-born CLASS Act long-term care provisions, the two dozen failed insurance co-ops, or the ill-conceived multistate plans that no longer exist. Obamacare has never been popular and never will be. This is why people seek out alternatives, like farm bureau plans and limited duration plans.
You can do better than Obamacare, but if you keep falling for the next crazy ideas the Democrats incessantly pump out, you will get the higher prices, fewer choices, and greater government dependency you deserve.
REPEAL OBAMACARE NOW!
– legalize true catastrophic insurance
– return Medicaid to a poverty program
END THE OBAMACARE CONGRESSIONAL EXEMPTION!