STUDY: Households Facing ObamaCare "Rate Shock" Will Get an Average of $2,672 In Free Money

[flpoljunkie]

STUDY: Households Facing ObamaCare "Rate Shock" Will Get an Average of $2,672 In Free Money
By Matthew Yglesias
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, at 12:19 PM

The conservative campaign against the Affordable Care Act is largely motivated by dislike of the large subsidies that it will make available to help people buy insurance. At the same time, the conservative campaign against the Affordable Care Act largely consists of ignoring the existence of these subsidies. But the subsidies are a big deal—that's why Republicans hate them.

The Kaiser Family Foundation did a very interesting study looking specifically at households who currently purchase insurance on the individual market. These are the folks who might be facing "rate shock" when ObamaCare is implemented and insurers can no longer freeze high-need patients out of the marketplace. They found that these households will, on average, get $2,672 in subsidy or about 32 percent of the total cost of a silver plan. If you opt for a bronze plan, the subsidy will cover an even larger share of the premium.



Ta-da!

It's really worth dwelling on this because something like 90% of the commentary I read on Obamacare involves a kind of bad faith denialism about these subsidies. The thing about subsidies is that money doesn't grow on trees. It comes from taxes. In this case largely taxes on rich people. And one of the core beliefs of the modern day Republican Party is that taxing rich people in order to give money to non-rich people is economically ruinous. Another of the core beliefs of the modern day Republican Party is that taxing rich people in order to give money to non-rich people is deeply immoral. These two ideas, alone and in combination, are the heart and soul of GOP economic policy. So it's no surprise that Republicans really dislike this law, since it's a major transfer of income from the rich to the non-rich. But from the flipside, if you're a normal person who thinks this kind of redistribution is neither immoral nor economically ruinous this is a big part of the appeal. It's one of the main reasons Obamacare will make many more people better off than it makes worse off.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/14/obamacare_subsidies.html

[calimary]

1. A couple of months ago, I got a letter from Anthem Blue Cross with a $90 check in it.

And there was an accompanying note touting how wonderful they were - 'cause they were LOWERING My PREMIUMS!!!! Out of the goodness of their hearts and their "Concern" about meeting their customers' best health-care needs!

Bullshit! They did it because they HAD TO.

That $90 check represented a dictate of the Affordable Care Act. The one that says that 80-some-odd percent of the premiums you pay in - MUST be applied to YOUR HEALTH CARE. It doesn't go to some CEO. It doesn't pay some board member's country club dues. It doesn't go toward the stock-holders. It goes directly toward YOUR OWN HEALTH CARE that YOU PAY THOSE PREMIUMS FOR.

There would have been no such thing if it hadn't been for the intervention of this awful hateful government that all the teabaggers despise. Some of them will be getting those checks too, and then what will they do? Hell, some of them will be getting access to affordable health care PERIOD, because of the ACA, the thing they so derisively call "Obamacare." THEY stand to benefit from it. And they probably won't even recognize it. It'll be interesting to see, as this rolls out and the Gotta-Placate-Ben-Nelson measures that were delayed for so long finally are allowed to take hold. The teabaggers will benefit, too. Much to their surprise and dismay, no doubt.

It's fun to watch people act out and throw tantrums and hissy-fits when they see how their world-view DOES NOT FIT with reality, and they still WANT IT TO, SOOOOOO BADLY!!!!!!


"I Want MY America BACK!!!!" yelled with sobbing and burbling from the back of the town hall meeting. "You do? Well, then, you must be a government intervention/regulation/union supporter!"

[CTyankee]

8. The GOP simply MUST kill Obamacare before it kicks in and the AMerican people start to experience

its benefits. That's why they are so furiously trying to stop it NOW. Once it is established, people won't want to let it go, just like SS and Medicare, which the GOP had tried so furiously to stop. And who know, maybe the "slippery slope" here will be straight into single payer?

[calimary]

19. That would certainly be my preference.

I think we have to press the meme that health care is a RIGHT. NOT a privilege like a driver's license is. It's a freakin' RIGHT. If indeed we all have the right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," seems to me health care is integral and quite essential to all three of those things.

[CTyankee]

20. I agree 100% but first we have to make universal health care a "desirable" thing, like SS and

Medicare. Once they know these programs, they won't let them go, because they realize they are SO important to their health and livelihood. That's what we have to do with Obamacare or whatever it becomes when we have a fully socialized medicine society...

[truedelphi]

23. Can I ask what state you are in?

Abnd do you know if all Anthem subscribers will get such a check.

[calimary]

24. California. I don't know the answer to that.

But I do know we had to go to Cigna to get insurance for my husband and our son. Our daughter's covered under mine, but Anthem refused the rest of our family because my guy and our boy had what can be considered pre-existing conditions. I couldn't get them covered under my policy for love nor money. I looked everywhere. Started checking other companies. We finally got them covered under Cigna last October. I was terrified of a romney presidency - in which the Affordable Care Act would surely be decimated, and Mr. Bain Capital would let all his sharky, snaky, fellow vultures and vampires and hyenas and other economic opportunistic infections feed on it til its carcass was picked to death.

I figured that the insurance industry was probably gonna hedge its bets, and if I had ANY shot at all at getting my men covered, I had to try and do it before the election. I figured somebody in that corporate Hell MIGHT still be amenable to covering some people - just in case Obama did pull out a win, even though the accelerating drumbeat sure made it look as though romney was gonna steal it. I had hoped I'd still have at least SOME chance of getting coverage before the election, because afterwards, if romney had won, there'd absolutely be NO chance at all.

It would have been a PR nightmare to have to swim through upstream - against a profoundly adverse current. There would have been all kinds of dancing in the endzone - "SEE???? America walks with US!!! SEE, WE were right, NOBODY out there REALLLLLLY wants affordable coverage or help or easier access. Laissez-faire WORKS!!! No laws! No regulations! Free market-free market! Obama and the lefties REPUDIATED!!! SEE??? There's yer proof! Right there in the ballot boxes of America! The voters have spoken! Nobody wants those "do-gooders" and their give-away-free-stuff ideas to all their moocher friends, and we've now proven it - the people have spoken and they're on OUR side, America has spoken and WE won and they all want it OUR way, and FUCK YOU, you damn Commies and Socialists! Leave it to the Free Market! Freedom-freedom! You were WRONG and WE WERE RIGHT!!! HA-HA-HA!!! GO EAT SHIT!!! GET OVER IT!!!!!" And blah-blah-blah. You KNOW it would have been that way. You KNOW it would have been EXACTLY that way! Every media outlet in America would have been using the Pox Noise script. Bad behavior just reinforced again and again and again. That would have been their message from then on, while romney and his smug haughty little empress would have been wiping their expensive shoes on our faces while at the same time telling us how wonderful and compassionate and humanitarian and noble and entitled to all this that they were. You KNOW it would have played out EXACTLY that way. Those bastards would have RUN with this message. They were well-prepared to do just that. After all, even romney himself didn't even bother to write a concession speech. And they had the romney transition team and the romney's-on-his-way-to-the-White-House website all up and completed and ready to go.

There's a shitload of dumping on Obama going on here, seemingly throughout DU. For many reasons. But you will not find me there. I just CANNOT get my mind off the whole nightmare notion of what could have been, and how big a bullet we dodged. CRIMINY, people! Those who are so quick to condemn, thinking it's all so shitty now, and he's blown this and he's fucked up that and blah-blah-blah - just stop and think for a moment how "marvelous" it'd be now if romney had won. That'd be me over in some corner mumbling "well, are you happy NOW?"

[BlueDemKev]

21. The Republicans Plan is to DELAY Obamacare's implementation...

...to 2015 or 2016 to give themselves time to capture the Senate and maybe the White House. President Obama CANNOT give in to this! It's disgusting that he's already postponed two elements of the law for one year. We need to get Obamacare fully-implemented on Jan. 1, 2014. This will give us time to work out any quirks and also give people a chance to start experiencing the benefits of the law.

NO MORE DELAYS. We've waited almost four years since the law was passed for it to be implemented, and the time is now.

[peace13]

2. And one might ask ....why is a subsidy necessary?

Our politicians insist on keeping the middle man. I say, send the subsidy bill to the insurance companies.

Looking at these figures we have to take into account that there will be millions of people who will not qualify for the program. Those folks will drain the savings account until it is empty. Wait six months without insurance and hope nothing bad happens in the interim. All for the middle man. Go figure!

[davidpdx]

6. Hopefully we are headed toward something like here in Korea

Where the insurance is all quasi-governmental and there is a premium based on your income plus a small copay. I believe we pay about 5.8% right now. When we aren't employed it's about $70 a month. Try finding insurance like that in the US.

[great white snark]

3. "Republicans dislike this law, since it's a major transfer of income from the rich to the non rich"

That quote sums up Repubs to a T. Thank you flpoljunkie.

[dkf]

4. This is the individual market which is so expensive normal people

Aren't using it anyway.

[pnwmom]

13. Normal people??????

You mean the millions who aren't lucky enough to work at large corporations or small employers with full-coverage health insurance?

"Normal people" do use the individual market, if by normal, you mean people with no preexisting condition. The prices aren't necessarily prohibitive for them.

[bigdarryl]

5. Wonder if all those rethugs who say they dislike Obama care will give back the money

[PowerToThePeople]

7. How is it a wealth transfer from Rich to non-rich?

The money goes to Insurance companies....

[Igel]

15. Because a lot of people get something along the way.

Health insurance.

[PowerToThePeople]

16. "If" it is a wealth transfer it is from tax payers to insurance companies, nothing more. n/t

[riqster]

26. You are ignoring the fact that people get insurance as part of that process.

Yes, we should have single-payer. But the ACA is a big step in the right direction.

[XemaSab]

9. Why not tax rich people

to get single payer?

At the very least, we should have a form of single payer for catastrophic coverage, like over $10,000 in a year.

I have serious asthma, and even the amount of the subsidy is more than I pay out of pocket for health care in a year.

[JayhawkSD]

10. And that leaves the individual to pay

$5578 per year, or $474 per month, with no choice to opt out. At $12/hour for a 40 hour week that represents about 35% of your take home pay. That is just an AWESOME deal. Generous to a fault.

[JTFrog]

11. Doubtful.

You could always check the Health Insurance calculator:

http://www.coveredca.com/calculating_the_cost.html

A family of three earning $26,000 per year

If you and your spouse have a child and earn about $26,000 per year, you can get health coverage through Medi-Cal.

A single mother of three kids earning $35,000 per year

If you are a 40-year old single mother of three earning $35,000 per year, your costs for health insurance might be as much as $8,784 per year if you were to pay the entire premium. However, if eligible, you will qualify for about $7,416 in tax credits to help pay your health insurance premiums. After applying the tax credit, you would be responsible for $1,368 annually – about $114 each month – for premium payments for the sliding scale plan for your family size and income level. You could also choose to apply your tax credit to a more, or less, expensive plan.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. The other poster spoke of individuals, which includes those of us whose families are

not recognized as families. You repsonded with information about married couples with kids and a single mother with 3 kids. Not one single word about singles, individuals or those treated as single due to bigoted laws and dogmatic nonsense favored by certain segments of society.

[JTFrog]

14. The example given in the OP was for a family plan.

So I first looked up the numbers for a family plan.

Using the same calculator, an individual making $25,000 is estimated to pay $144/month for a silver plan. About $4,000 less than that poster claimed.

Please do not talk down to me about equal rights as if I don't care. I've seen you do this to other posters and it's not cool.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Don't talk down to others and you won't get it in return. I am so sick of the

lumping of all of us into 'families' when the law does not allow my family to be called a family. It needs to end. Sorry if you are offended by the call for accurate language which acknowledges the facts of discrimination under our current laws rather than glossing over that discrimination.
And lecturing others about how to speak to others as if you were a parent is the definition of talking down to others. Monitoring my behavior on DU is not your job nor your place.

[JTFrog]

18. I think you should rein it in a little.

I did none of the things you accuse me of in your post. Your anger and frustration are righteous, but you are taking it out on the wrong person.

[Marrah_G]

22. it should be a real subsidy and not a tax credit

[stevenleser]

27. It's completely free medicaid at the income level that other person posted. nt

[KennedyBrothers]

25. Bottom line: Wait and see

I'm withholding judgment on Obamacare until I am insured under it. Then and only then will I (and millions of others) be able to make an informed decision.