"The myths of Obamacare's 'failure'"

[applegrove]

The myths of Obamacare's 'failure'

By Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-obamacares-failure-20131118,0,6037469.story#axzz2l1BVunIJ

"SNIP....................................



What about individual policy-holders? They number somewhere between 8.5 million and 9.5 million. The vast majority of these customers -- two-thirds -- spend less than a year in the individual market, according to a 2004 study published in Health Affairs. The study found that most people use individual insurance to bridge between periods of coverage from employers or public programs like Medicaid. If three-quarters of the individual customers will be eligible for insurance subsidies, that leaves 2.1 million to 2.4 million Americans paying the full freight.

The last piece of the puzzle, and the murkiest, is how many of this last group will be paying higher prices for lesser coverage -- the emblematic Obamacare "victims." Even if it's all of them, at most they account for less than 1% of the country.

But plainly they're not all paying more for less. We know this because the individual market is where people have been getting ripped off by overpaying for inadequate coverage -- "junk" insurance in many cases. It's where premiums are driven up and coverage constrained by pre-existing conditions. Those practices are eradicated by the Affordable Care Act.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones posits that one-third of these customers may be charged more for less, which sounds reasonable, if perhaps a little high. I've heard from dozens of readers who claim to be in that group. But my experience, which I'd guess is matched by most of my journalistic colleagues, is that most of them aren't examining their options very well. They're not calculating their costs beyond their premiums -- the free services mandated by Obamacare they're not getting today, for instance. They're not factoring in the rate increases on their existing plans they've been hit with in the past, and would face again, but will be limited under Obamacare.


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