Here’s a real dog bites man story of the day. Conservatives are spreading false information about Obamacare. And yes, it is also shocking that gambling is going on at Rick’s.
You know those teaser rates that insurance companies advertise all over the internet? You know, those rates you will never get unless you are young, in perfect health, and you had wisely chosen to be born into a very healthy family? Guess what? Those rates are lower than the rates which will be available to real people in the insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. Not to mention the fact that, without Obamacare, the changes of getting an affordable policy on the individual market if you have any medical problems or are over 40 is pretty low.
Jonathan Kohn has a look at the distortion being spread by the right, starting with a writer at Forbes. Ezra Klein described the bogus rates which Avik Roy compared to the actual rates in the exchanges this way:
Roy got his 146 percent by heading to eHealthInsurance.com, running a search for insurance plans in California and comparing the cost of the cheapest plans to the cost of the plans being offered in the exchanges. That’s not just comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing apples to oranges that the fruit guy may not even let you buy.
None of this stops right wing bloggers from citing Roy’s findings. None of this is a surprise. The only question is whether those spreading this argument are really this ignorant as to how insurance works, or if they are just spreading any lies because they hate Obamacare (for a multitude of reasons which don’t hold up to scrutiny).
What if the government said I have to purchase a new prius for $3000 next year. My $4000 10 year old car with 120,000 miles has been serving me well, but now I must buy a new more expensive, more fuel efficient car – whether I have the financial resources or not. I see the low premium high deductable catostrophic plan as an expensive, but more affordable option then a plan with all the bells and whistles.
There are many differences between your car analogy and health care coverage, and this doesn’t really apply at all to the specifics of this post. However, as for the point you are making, I do agree that the Affordable Care Act should offer more flexibility in what individuals can choose. The problem is that we had an unsustainable situation. The solution was not perfect, but far better than the previous situation.
Republicans actually deserve a lot of the blame for this type of problem. Normally something as huge as health care reform would pass, and then further laws would fix problems such as this. In this case the Republicans will only vote on futile bills to repeal and won’t go along with attempts to improve the bill. In addition, we would have had a much better law if Republicans had been reasonable while it was first going through Congress. Instead we had to go with the initial Senate bill. The original House bill would have been much better, and a final bill might have been even better if we had normal bipartisan cooperation and compromise.