The most recent example of the disconnect in the healthcare industry from the reality of American life for most Americans is easily discerned in a BloombergView editorial on October 26, 2015 by Christopher Flavelle, “Obamacare Premiums Aren’t Skyrocketing.”
Suddenly, the “numbers,” like the squeezing of every single possible enrollee to pump up the number of people who “have” health insurance are flipped on their heads and the brutal TAKING of MORE AND MORE money for health insurance that for the most part provides worse coverage than ever in terms of needed services when you’re sick because of higher deductibles, copayments and coinsurance gets minimized.
Mr. Flavelle argues: “Yes, some of those states will see eye-popping increases: a 36 percent jump in Oklahoma, for example, and a 32 percent rise in Alaska,” immediately discounting that’s only “some” people.
Suddenly, an increase in premiums this YEAR described as “just 7.5 percent,” isn’t significant.
This in a year when social security COLA payments are going up “just” ZERO, the same essentially for stagnant wages, (see for example, Pew Research, Drew Desilver, 10/9/2014, “For most workers, real wages have barely budged for decades.” We have the highest nonparticipation rate—people who have just fallen out of the workforce, in 40 years.
JUST 7.5 percent? Many of us have already been hit with dramatic increases in premiums in addition to massive increases in copayments, coinsurance and deductibles. That was the way Obamacare was built, to TIME INCREASES IN WHAT WE PAY FOR PERSONAL HEALTH COSTS TO NATIONAL ELECTION OFF YEARS. Even in this upcoming election year, this is the best Obamacare fans can argue, that we're only paying overall another 7.5 percent this year?
Sure, many people won’t feel the MONEY pain of the steady growth of the problems that created the need for healthcare reform to begin with like those on Medicaid or those who get premium assistance. For them government money disguises the failure of Obamacare in terms of money. But for most of us, no article should be trusted that defends a THIS YEAR overall increase of “JUST” 7.5 percent.
The Obamacare mandate that we all purchase a product, health insurance, regardless of whether we can afford it, afford to use it, or whether it applies to us (preventive services we must purchase for ourselves but pay for for others such as dental and vision for children, sex-specific benefits like checkups for females) is absurd to begin with. Touting a 7.5 percent INCREASE THIS YEAR in that forced purchase as GOOD NEWS? That’s a pretty big disconnect.
