Here's The Answer Jon Stewart Should Have Gotten On Obamacare Last Night

[Emit]

Here's The Answer Jon Stewart Should Have Gotten On Obamacare Last Night

Josh Barro Oct. 8, 2013, 11:10 AM

Last night, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave a trainwreck of an interview about Obamacare on The Daily Show.

Host Jon Stewart kept pressing Sebelius on the individual mandate: How come companies got a one-year delay of the requirement to provide health insurance to full-time workers, but individuals didn't get a delay of their own mandate to buy insurance? Don't individuals deserve the same "courtesy" of a one-year delay?

Sebelius couldn't satisfy Stewart because she never gave the correct answer to his question: The difference between the two mandates is necessity.

The individual mandate is essential to the good functioning of the insurance markets created by Obamacare, and the employer mandate isn't.

Sebelius should have given the explanation that health policy scholar Adrianna McIntyre gave in July:

Just because “individual mandate” and “employer mandate” sound the same doesn’t mean that they are. Equating the two reaches an impressive new level of political theatre—and demonstrates willful ignorance of the motivations behind each mandate.

The individual mandate isn’t about fairness relative to employers. It’s about this chart. Pulled from the landmark paper on adverse selection by David Cutler and Richard Zeckhauser, this is the graphical representation of the dread insurance “death spiral”.



Adverse selection isn’t an especially difficult concept to grasp. With guaranteed issue (telling insurers they can’t discriminate based on pre-existing conditions), sick people are more likely to sign up for insurance. That makes the risk pool—the group of people an insurer covers—less healthy and more expensive. That causes premiums to rise and healthy people drop out, in a cycle that perpetuates until insurance is woefully out of financial reach. This is a market failure, and requiring individuals to purchase insurance works to correct that failure by keeping the young and healthy in the risk pool.

In other words, if you don't have an individual mandate, the risk is that only sick people will buy insurance, and then premiums will skyrocket, making it unaffordable for everyone. It's called the Affordable Care Act, but the care will only be affordable if you get broad participation in the insurance pools, which the individual mandate produces.

~snip~

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-answer-jon-stewart-should-have-gotten-on-obamacare-2013-10

[Scuba]

1. Her performance was very disappointing. I knew the answer! Learned it right here on DU!

[Mika]

2. Kathleen Sebelius doesn't seem able to explain her way outta a wet paper bag.

I was hitting the roof listening to Jon and her last night.

[dflprincess]

3. What irked me was that she kept equating health insurance with health care

That may be true if you can afford the platinum plan but if all you can manage is the bronze you'll still be thinking about whether or not you can afford to see a doctor.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Yes, the fear of losing one's home due to medical bills will not be abated for everyone.

[russspeakeasy]

4. "Trainwreck" ? You are way toooooooo kind.

[BluegrassStateBlues]

5. I will no longer be watching Stewart.

Now is not the time to give the GOP more talking points and he did just that.

That asshole Tea Partier on Andrea Mitchell today even brought it up.

Sebelius was ambushed. What is Stewart's agenda?

[JI7]

7. i didn't watch but it seems to be SEbelius' fault for not doing a good job

one reason Stewart brings up these questions is to give a chance to respond to a lot of the right wing crap.

this wasn't some gotcha type media whore question.

it was something very simple that she should have been able to answer as is in the OP .