Quote:
Originally Posted by
Darthtang AW http:///t/397098/sure-you-can-have-health-insurance-not-sure-how-you-will-pay-for-it/20#post_3538830
Stupid computer. Typed this up twice now. So you will get the short version.
The percentages of small businesses and self employed in this country account for 59% of the work force. (2011 census)
These people are who the state lines argument would assist in cost reduction. Since insurance pool would now be national and competition would assist them in cost reduction. since they are only able to gain insurance through companies currenttly operating in their state. I know first hand as a small business employer something of this. I used to work part-time at home depot and instead of enrolling through my personal business heath insurance that was brought in for my employees, I opted for the Home depot insurance for my family due to cost and deductibles. My choices for my business were five Heath Insurance companies. Not exactly a market for competition for pricing. Think of it as your electric company....you don't have much choice. Rates go up and you have no recourse because there is limited competition.
the under thirty crowd isn't signing up. They are choosing to pay the penalty. Which in turn means the costs wont even out for the insurance companies. There is a reason the ACA contains a Health Insurance bail out clause.. The people that are keeping their college kids on their insurance (if they had private insurance) say an increase of their chids portion of insurance increase 81%. Either way the younger generation had a premium cost increase of 81%...whether the kid is paying it or not...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/12/05/obamacare-raises-health-insurance-costs-especially-for-the-young/
The CBO numbers include medicare/medicaid/ and uninsured. The greater majority of medicaid/medicare recipients figured into their numbers would have enrolled in medicare/medicaid upon age eligibility anyway. Thus the true number of people gaining insurance through ACA will amount to roughly 17 million people gaining insurance in the next ten years. Leaving well over 30million to remain uninsured. You can look at these statistics at the CBO website. if one were to go with the higher number of the original cbo report, the number of uninsured gaining insurance would be only 25 million in the next ten years, leaving a little over 25 million uninsured. The CBO has amended their number of uninsured to around 50 million roughly...this includes the younger crowd now as well.
Earlier you stated the CBO is misleading concerning the jobs portion aspect. You would be correct in that comment. The CBO states :
Q: Will 2.5 Million People Lose Their Jobs in 2024 Because of the ACA?
A: No, we would not describe our estimates in that way.
We wrote in the report: “CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.” The reason for the reduction in the supply of labor is that the provisions of the ACA reduce the incentive to work for certain subsets of the population.
For example, under the ACA, health insurance subsidies are provided to some people with low income and are phased out as their income rises; as a result, a portion of the added income from working more would be offset by a loss of some or all of the subsidies, which represents an implicit tax on earnings. Also, the ACA’s subsidies effectively boost the income of recipients, which will lead some of them to decide they can work less and still maintain or improve their standard of living. Therefore, some people will decide not to work or to work fewer hours than would otherwise be the case—including some people who will choose to retire earlier than they would have otherwise, and some people who will work less themselves and rely more on a spouse’s earnings. (Many other factors influence decisions about working, including, for example, income and payroll taxes and the cost of commuting and child care. Moreover, under current economic conditions, a substantial number of people who would like to work cannot find a job.)
Because the longer-term reduction in work is expected to come almost entirely from a decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply in response to the changes in their incentives, we do not think it is accurate to say that the reduction stems from people “losing” their jobs.
Here’s a useful way to think about the choice of wording: When firms do not have enough business and decide to lay people off, the people who are laid off are generally worse off and are therefore unhappy about what is happening. As a result, other people express their sympathy to those people for having “lost their jobs” due to forces beyond their control. In contrast, when the labor market is strong and people decide on their own to retire, to leave work to take care of their families, or to cut back on their hours to pursue other interests, those people presumably think they are better off (or they would not be making the voluntary choices they are making). As a result, other people are generally happy for them and do not describe them as having “lost their jobs.”
Thus, there is a critical difference between, on the one hand, people who leave a job for reasons beyond their control and, on the other hand, people who choose not to work or to work less. The wording that people use to describe those differing circumstances reflects the different reactions of the people involved. In our report, we indicated that “the estimated reduction [in employment] stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply,” so we think the language of “losing a job” does not fit.
Ultimately, we project that the number of jobs in the economy will be smaller than it would be in the absence of the ACA because some people will choose not to work at all, but CBO did not estimate the size of that change separately from the effect of people choosing to work fewer hours. We wrote in the report: “The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024 … The decline in full-time-equivalent employment stemming from the ACA will consist of some people not being employed at all and other people working fewer hours; however, CBO has not tried to quantify those two components of the overall effect.” To be clear, total employment and hours worked will increase over the coming decade, but by less than they would have in the absence of the ACA. In the next few years, as we wrote in the report, the ACA “also will affect employers’ demand for workers, … both by increasing labor costs through the employer penalty (which will reduce labor demand) and by boosting overall demand for goods and services (which will increase labor demand).”
There is a broader question as to whether the society and the economy will be better off as a result of those choices being made available. Even though the individuals making decisions to work less presumably feel that they will be happier as a result of those decisions, total employment, investment, output, and tax revenue will be smaller. (Those effects are included in CBO’s budget and economic projections under current law.) To be sure, the health insurance system in place prior to the ACA generated its own distortions to people’s work decisions, but many of the decisions to work less under the ACA will be made possible by government-funded subsidies, the burden of which will be borne largely by other people. Moreover, people’s decisions about work are also affected by taxes and benefit programs apart from those related to health insurance. Hence, whether voluntary reductions in hours worked owing to the ACA are good or bad for the country as a whole is a matter of judgment.
A tradeoff of this sort—although not necessarily of the same magnitude—is intrinsic in any effort to significantly increase health insurance coverage or to provide other types of benefits that are aimed at low-income people. As we wrote in the report: “Subsidies that help lower-income people purchase an expensive product like health insurance must be relatively large to encourage a significant proportion of eligible people to enroll. If those subsidies are phased out with rising income …, the phaseout effectively … discourage[es] work.” Again, the best way to address that tradeoff is a matter of judgment.
Guess you didn't read this part of your Forbes article:
In fact, according to Evans’ numbers, for 21-year-olds in the most expensive 25% of plans, things actually get better. For a 14% increase in premiums (to $275) they get a 19% decrease in deductible (to $1,537) and a 35% decrease in out-of-pocket maximum, the maximum amount of covered health care costs they could spend (to $4,587).
The problem, he argues, is that this isn’t what makes people buy health insurance. For a 21-year-old male buying a plan, the chances of getting anything from it are low. So he’s more likely to risk going without insurance when you both increase the premium and increase the amount he has to spend out of pocket. And that means fewer young, healthy people buying plans through ObamaCare, which in turn could make the business of selling those plans less appealing for insurers.
So the problem with this "expert" analysis is that he's under the same assumption that all these 20-something's and 30-something's have - that they are impervious from having a major illness, getting into some major accident, or simply hurting themselves while doing sports or other activities that have a high risk of injury. So we should give them a pass and accept the fact that if any of the aforementioned incidents occur in their lives, the rest of us have to foot their bills, either by our increased taxes to pay for our local County hospitals and clinics, or our premiums and deductibles go up because the insurance and medical providers aren't going to eat that cost on their own. No, it's time for them to take responsibility of their own lives and protect themselves just like they do when they purchase insurance for their car.
Not sure where they get their data about insurance costs for parents who still have their kids on their plan going up 81%. I have both my daughters who are currently in college on my wife's plan. Our insurance premiums sure haven't gone up 81%.
