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Kaiser taking a shot at the basics of ObamaCare.
The video goes out of its way to get to the basics. The idea that some items will be free should be a clue that the number 1 issue of cost will not be addressed but made worse by this policy.
All issues have to do with insurance coverage. So ObamaCare is a huge mandate on coverage, including expanding Medicaid and other subsidies. So this entitlement will expand the cost of healthcare.
Not mentioned is the reduction of the Health Savings Accounts.
All-in-all the idea that this will increase competition between insurance companies is false thinking. Kaiser has done a nice job here of just describing what the advocates have politically argued.
One can argue that this penalty, now declared a tax, is the largest one in history: Link
It will be the most expensive entitlement in history, despite all of the rhetoric from the government to the contrary.
The logic is quite simple:
· 16,000 IRS agents hired to make the mandate work.
· Over 150 panels mandating some aspect of coverage allowed.
· Expansion of Medicare and Medicaid roles and costs.
· Mandating through exchanges a higher level of insurance coverage.
· Doing away with pre-existing conditions, no matter how bad.
· Expansion of taxes in various areas.
This is a simple set of highlights to say that the CBO cost analysis done can be quite misleading as it has continually over history. Simple estimates of the cost of these ideas could be as high as $4T or higher over 10 years, not the $1B that the CBO has given us, and higher than the $2.5T that some think tanks have determined for the full decade of benefits and costs.
For liberals to spin this whole program as a cost reduction and coverage solution reeks of bad and misleading politics. For the healthcare crisis is really a cost issue, brought about by decades of badly constructed incentives and a mandated decline in competition.
What do you make of these ideas?