By Stephen Green
New Yorkers are supposed to be some of ObamaCare’s few winners — but for how long? Read:
The penalty for ignoring ObamaCare’s “individual mandate” to buy health insurance next year is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child — up to $285 per family — or 1 percent of taxable family income, whichever is higher.
But it will jump to $325 per adult and $167.50 per child, or 2 percent of income, in 2015, and to $695 per adult and $347.50, or 2.5 percent of income, in 2016, with future hikes tied to cost of living.
Pacific Research Institute President Sally Pipes, author of “The Cure for Obamacare,” said that’s not enough to get healthy, young adults to shell out for coverage.
“Even though the price is down, the price is still very expensive,” she said. “People are not going to buy into this. Then the system will implode.”
Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, predicted a “death spiral” in which the rates rise over the next several years, leading healthy people to drop their coverage while “very sick” people “stay in until the very last drop,” forcing rates up even more.
“The death spiral is well known in health insurance,” he said.
Heritage’s Edmund Haislmaier added, “You’re going to have very limited access to doctors and hospitals.” But I’m pretty sure that’s a feature, not a bug.
How about that downward-bending cost curve? Not so bendy, says George Mason’s Charles Blahous:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed into law by President Obama in 2010 will significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law. Supporters argued that this comprehensive health care reform would deliver a much-needed correction to the government’s unsustainable fiscal outlook and would benefit the country’s overall fiscal situation. However, between now and 2021, the ACA is expected to add as much as $530 billion to federal deficits while increasing spending by more than $1.15 trillion. Despite the fondest hopes from its supporters, the passage of the ACA unambiguously darkens a dim fiscal picture.
Big fat numbers and a PDF of Blahous’s full report at the link.
But don’t worry. Everything will work out just fine so long as healthy young people start buying insurance they don’t really want and probably can’t afford which the law doesn’t incentivize them to do.
Geeeeeeeeeeenius.
Here’s a related item, reported from across the pond.
Who’s going to pay for the ObamaCare subsidies when fulltime work becomes a thing of the past?