printThe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released a report full of “happy talk about how premiums will be ‘lower than originally expected,” writes Avik Roy at Forbes. “The reality is starkly different”:
Absent is “the stat that really matters: how much rates will go up next year, under Obamacare, relative to this year, prior to the law taking effect. …Former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin agrees. “There are literally no comparisons to current rates. That is, HHS has chosen to dodge the question of whose rates are going up, and how much. Instead they try to distract with a comparison to a hypothetical number that has nothing to do with the actual experience of real people.”
The Manhattan Institute has “conducted two comparisons between pre-ACA data and post-ACA data, as reported by HHS. The first comparison is between the cheapest plan available to 27-year-olds pre- and post-Obamacare. The second is between the cheapest plan available to the average exchange participant, and to the typical 40-year-old pre-Obamacare. … many 27-year-olds will face steep increases in the underlying cost of individually-purchased insurance under Obamacare. For the states where we have data—the 36 reported by HHS, plus nine others that we had compiled for our map that HHS didn’t report—rates will go up for men by an average of 97 percent; for women, 55 percent. …
… Middle-class Americans face the double-whammy of higher insurance premiums, and higher taxes to pay for other people’s subsidies. …For months, we’ve heard about how Obamacare’s trillions in health care subsidies were going to save America from rate shock. It’s not true. If you shop for coverage on your own, you’re likely to see your rates go up, even after accounting for the impact of pre-existing conditions, even after accounting for the impact of subsidies.”
More at “The Apothecary, With Avik Roy.”
“If Obamacare is funded, the subsidies starting in January will constitute a morphine drip from which America’s health-care system will not recover. If not stopped now, Obamacare is forever. …
…Americans don’t want a dignified surrender on Obamacare. They want someone to drive a stake through Obamacare.
House Republicans need to tell the country: Come hell or high water, we’re not voting to fund Obamacare. We will pass a CR on everything else in the budget, but Obamacare is not coming out of this House alive.”
MORE.