Though I'm anti Obamacare and anti-Obama's role in deceiving me about Obamacare, this writing is about deconstructing the news to prevent myself and others from being played again if we decide to be health industrial complex voters.
Here, one sentence deconstruction to help us stop being the "stupid" voter Obama colleague and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragged about that helped get Obamacare passed: "The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange is expected to decline by 2% for 2019, Health Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday," CNN, Tami Luhby, 9/28/2018.
Not surprisingly, Obama's come out of hiding and taken a break from trying to outsmart Illinois folk for his Obama shrine (see lawsuit filed to block Obama 'library'), to lecture and lie to us again about health insurance. Yeah, I can't stand listening to him on this subject-matter because I was one of those "stupid" Americans that voted for him based on his lies. Lies is a strong word so here's a sample of why I believe that the word accurately portrays Obama on Obamacare: Universal health care, universal coverage, keep your plan if you like it, single risk pool, number of uninsured (found by his Administration to be overestimated), $2,500 savings per family, coverage like his family has.
Back to the CNN quote above. To base our vote on this piece of well-published news, "The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange is expected to decline by 2% for 2019, Health Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday," deconstructing the statement will make us informed rather than "stupid" voters.
We know that at most, using the highest enrollment year ever, that the metallic plans, bronze, silver and gold refer to Obamacare plans used by around 11 million people at its top guesstimate for any particular enrollment year. Hardly all Americans, we are a country of 325.7 million.
Of course, it's not that simple. "The premium…" Premium is the cost of obtaining health insurance, what it costs us to buy the consumer financial product of health insurance.
OK, so "The premium for the benchmark silver policy…" The benchmark silver policy is the cost to consumers in a particular state to purchase the second-lowest cost silver plan available in their region. Immediately we realize, which is in fact what is happening, that the overall decrease is regional, which means that SOME states of the 39 using the federally run exchange will see INCREASES in the cost of their silver plans.
Since the Obamacare exchange plan prices are based on the prices of health insurance plans in the non-Obamacare market, eg the rest of America who is not Medicaid, a public employee, Medicare, then these "lower" plan costs SHOULD reflect a lowering of plan cost options in a particular region. This is good news IF you're in one of the 39 states participating on the federally run exchange AND you're one of the states that's seeing a drop in your silver plan exchange costs.
The silver "benchmark" plans are a very important part of Obamacare because they were designed to be the plan that attracted more of those young healthies in an effort to "protect" insurance companies from the costs of actually having to provide coverage for other insureds.
This didn't work, not ever, for two obvious reasons: First, President Obama openly lectured about using young-healthies as tools to balance out the risk pool and keep insurance costs down because they were less likely to need to use their health insurance statistically. Young healthies therefore, following their characterization by Obama sought to control their PREMIUM costs by purchasing the cheaper bronze plans.
After all, if they're less likely to use their insurance, then the costs of using health insurance, deductible, copay, coinsurance are less important than the cost of OBTAINING health insurance, eg premiums, and premiums for bronze plans were cheaper.
Obama's Congressional Budget Office addressed the situation in 2015 saying, "…“…more people will forgo those subsidies by choosing to enroll in a bronze plan instead of a silver plan…the agencies expect that some people purchasing coverage through exchanges solely to comply with the individual mandate will be focused on minimizing their premium payments and thus will continue to choose bronze plans.’”
Surprise, surprise, that year, 2015 for benefits year 2016 we saw a bigger increase in the cost of bronze plans than silver plans in an insurance company effort to push more young healthies into silver plans. As reported in BloombergView on November 3, 2015, by Megan McArdle, “Cost of Cheapest Obamacare Plans Soaring,” there was a 7.5 percent increase for the silver plan and a 13 percent increase for the bronze plan.
Second, and related, since young healthies listened to President Obama lecture them as tools and the key to making Obamacare work, the young healthies realized that the cost sharing provisions, an extra pot sweetener that in certain low-income circumstances helped cover the cost of USING health insurance, eg copays, coinsurance and deductibles was ALSO less relevant to a group of people less likely to USE health insurance but still required to have it (individual mandate) and therefore looking for the least expensive cost of purchasing health insurance.
Moving on, "The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange…" The federal exchange is an incorrect term. Remember the states' rights issues that arose, culminating in the Supreme Court decision that Obamacare couldn't FORCE states to adopt expanded Medicaid? Well, it also couldn't FORCE states to create health exchanges.
Instead, in order to make Obamacare available in states that didn't want it, Obamacare created the federally run exchanges, which were supposed to reflect the states' health insurance options. This is an oft-ignored but significant problem with language in Obamacare. On the one hand, "Federal exchange" makes it sound like there is a "national" option for Obamacare plans that are available to citizens in all states. Not true.
The language is actually referring to a "federally run exchange," which means that the healthcare.gov website is a clearinghouse where citizens can go and find out their state options. There is no single option for anyone using the exchanges, there's just a single website we all can go to in order to be directed to our individual state choices. Big difference, because people in different states will be charged different rates.
We'll finish deconstruction here: "The premium for the benchmark silver policy on the federal exchange is expected to decline by 2% for 2019." "Is expected to decline by two percent for 2019…" Now we know, that's on average among the 39 states participating in the federally run exchanges for the benefits year 2019 regarding the silver level benchmark, second-lowest cost policy offered in those states based on the regional costs of such plans in a particular state. Some states may see increases, some may stay the same, some may see decreases, on AVERAGE two percent is this year's decrease overall.
So what does that mean to us as voters?
For me it means that the "cost" of my health insurance, premium, is dependent on the state in which I live and other factors like tobacco use and age in 2019 regardless of whether I use Obamacare exchange plans or otherwise. It also means that a two percent average decrease doesn't take into account INCREASES I will see in terms of cash outlays, deductibles, coinsurance and copays, which are insurance plan dependent but have since Obamacare become more and more expensive.
This means that a two percent average savings on plans that have drastically increased the costs of using my health insurance are much less valuable than changes that would mean better coverage, eg lowering of cash outlays to use the insurance coverage. Further, the overall two percent decrease is less relevant when we consider that the government has already announced an almost one percent increase in the out of pocket maximum for 2019 to $7,900 for self-only coverage and to $15,800 for other than self coverage.
Finally, logically, we're no longer those "stupid" voters and listening to a bunch of politicians, public employees who are de facto EXEMPT from Obamacare as per provisions provided by President Obama almost simultaneously with the imposition of the law on everyone else. The brazen hypocrisy of public employees should be and to this consumer is unacceptable and should always be the FIRST demand of health insurance reform, the end of public employee health insurance entitlements paid for up to 75 percent by taxpayers.
