To lurking DUmmies:
Taxpayers are paying the subsidy for the poor and working class to buy health insurance. In other words, taxpayer are paying for all or part of the premium, the monthly payment to the insurance company.
But, for the insurance companies, an increased number of poor and working class on the insurance roles means a lot more potentially sick people and a lot more medical bills to pay. Remember
the insurance company is still the entity paying the doctor and hospital bills, not the government. The insurance companies have to get that money from somewhere.
Before Obamacare, the insurance companies would charge older, sicker people more money in premiums (monthly payments) to offset the higher and more frequent medical bills they needed the insurer to pay.
In the Obamacare system, the insurance company
cannot ask for higher premiums from older, sicker people who are getting their insurance through that system. The insurance company has to find another source of money to make up for all that extra healthcare cost.
Insurance companies will get that money in one of several ways:
1. Charging people who buy their own insurance higher rates
for the same insurance they have
2. Charging companies who buy insurance for their employees higher rates
for the same insurance they have
3. Getting new customers who will pay them money in premiums but not use much insurance, i.e. young healthy people.
This is why, under Obamacare:
1. Private individuals who have been buying their own health insurance all along have had their rates jump from 20-50% in California. (And yes, added together, it has been this much and sometimes more. And yes, insurers actually
wrote letters to their customers saying that the rate increases were due to the Affordable Care Act.)
2. Companies who have been buying health insurance for their employees have seen increases of 10-20% and have been trying to pass the cost on to their employees OR have been trying to get family members off the employee plans OR have been trying to get retirees out of company health insurance and on to Obamacare.
3. Young adults, who often got cheap (catastrophic) insurance or no insurance at all, are being required BY LAW (the mandate) to buy more insurance than they might need (on Obamacare) and at a higher cost than they would have at a private insurer before Obamacare.
Also remember that Obamacare creates a huge bureaucracy and a massive new amount of paperwork for insurers. These administrative costs also have to be paid for.
So, who did you think was paying for everything, DUmmies? Santa Claus?
We tried to tell you.
Skinner threw lots of truthtellers off of DU during the House fight about Obamacare, the public option, etc.
Here's some other truth for you:
Harry Reid has recently been telling people that the ultimate goal of Obamacare is single payer. Don't believe it. If single payer had been the goal, there would have been a mechanism for it: the public option. That was off the table from the beginning. Did you notice that even when Reid started this "single payer" talking point a month or two ago, health insurance stocks did not go down? That's because the industry knows he's full of it. Harry is just trying to drum up support from the true Left, who are appalled at the bastardization of their single payer dream.
So if the government doesn't really want single payer, why is it involved?
a. Surveillance
They want instant access to the health records of your entire life without a warrant.
b. Rationing.
They want to help their buddies in the insurance industry pay even less for your care by rationing it by government fiat. You'll still pay them a bundle and insurers will make more profits.
c. Control
The government will now have control over a huge sector of the economy.
And you thought it was because Obama cared that you got the sniffles?
Originally Posted by Carol
