3. People who do get insurance apparently aren’t getting the right coverage, think they got coverage, or in some cases get coverage for three plans thinking they got coverage for one plan. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obamacare-woes-widen-as-insurers-get-wrong-data-2013-10-18 Now think about this for a second. According to Yahoo News, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/50-states-obamacare-113318311.html, the average cost of a Bronze Plan costs $249 a month in premium costs. So lets say Joe Schmo accidentally signs up for 3 plans thinking he only signed up for 1 plan. Legally he will be required to pay for all three plans until he cancels two of them a mark up of an additional $500 per month. This of course assumes that he accidentally signs up for three Bronze plans, as bad as the system is he could be signed up for a Brozne Plan and two Gold plans (as I am struggling to find any information on the cost of a Platinum Plan). A gold plan costs an average of $412 per month http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/10/see_how_much_obamacare_coverag.html. This boosts Joes Burden up to over $1,000 per month on health insurance that he might not be able to afford.
Today the Washington Examiner continues to report on these issues in greater detail. 1 in 4 Obamacare enrollments affected by technical bug first month | WashingtonExaminer.com: Basically the report says previous to the web site fix 25% of those who did sign up essentially didn’t, they only thought they did. Even now after the website “fix” at a minimum 10% of those who have signed really haven’t. Mind you there are no official numbers still, so this could go way up.
Earlier this week it was reported that while the Health Care Site is “working” it still has basically no security measures which should be a major concern given that quality web companies that take security seriously like Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Facebook have all had accounts hacked despite those companies very strong efforts to protect you the customer.
In other words like it or not Americans are not the Alpha Testers of this very bad plan. Worse yet as was pointed out again this week the youth just isn’t interested. While some on the right might think this is a good thing because it will mean the ability to watch the Healthcare Act fall apart like the house of cards it is. Think again.
Without the youth supporting the plans now currently mandated by the Government we will see something far worse and much more sinister. The collapse of the American Health Insurance industry altogether. The fact is insurance is built on the premise of healthy people putting money into a pool on the chance they get sick. However since the house of cards was designed to cover specifically every ailment and all those who suffer from them from the get go now we are looking at much higher premiums on those who otherwise wouldn’t have as much to worry about. What used to traditionally used to be a smart gamble has now become and expensive guarantee as the sick would be foolish to not get insured and the healthy are now wise to avoid it altogether.
The problem is now those insurance rates are going to continue to go up and eventually the insurance companies will collapse under the weight of increased cost and not enough customers to stay afloat. John Fund wrote about this problem over at National Review.
Bottom line, if you think the bank bail out was bad just wait because the insurance bailout is coming, and it is going to hurt bad. And what choice will we have. Both parties, both Houses, and two Presidents have already in very recent history backed the bail out of the banking industry. Something that to be fair was a government created problem anyway just read this month’s Imprimis . The collapse of the insurance industry will fall entirely on Government, as such we will be obligated to bail the industry out. With that bail out however will come a very important lesson that we better take away. Just as the argument from Peter Wallison concerning why we should repeal Dodd-Frank we must absolutely must repeal the Affordable Care Act. Where as Dodd-Frank will more than likely eventually lead to a future banking crisis the Affordable Care Act is already proving to lay the groundwork for the insurance crisis. There were solutions to the American Health Care system that were already working in many states. Allow the States to regulate their own Health Care and get the Federal Government out.
