8 ways Obamacare has proved its critics wrong Updated by Sarah Kliff on February 19, 2015, 12:20 p.m. ET Back in the fall of 2013, it wasn't exactly a bold move to predict Obamacare would turn out to be a complete disaster. Healthcare.gov was busted. Sign-up numbers were dismal. Americans are "not interested" in buying what the president was selling, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh declared on his radio show in late October. House Speaker John Boehner was a bit more pointed. "When you step back and look at the totality of this," he said at a November press conference, "I don't think it's ever going to work." These days, Obamacare seems to be working reasonably well. The Obama administration announced Wednesday that 11.4 million people signed up for private coverage in 2015, an increase of about 3 million from 2014. We can definitively say that more people have coverage after Obamacare than did before. We also know that people who bought Obamacare say they're generally pretty happy with their health insurance plans and that they can mostly get a doctor appointment within two weeks. Looking back at expectations set during the first enrollment shows how terribly pundits and politicians expected Obamacare to go — and how much of the predicted disaster never actually happened: 1) Nobody wants to buy Obamacare 2) Obamacare will "never" meet its enrollment goal 3) Obamacare will wreak havoc on the economy 4) The website will never work 5) Only people who already had coverage are signing up 6) Obamacare would cause a net-loss of insurance 7) Premiums will skyrocket 8) Obamacare just can't work More >>
The critics are completely correct about about points 4 and 7. Once again the Obamacare website failed on the final weekend of enrollment. The government also had to hire recently a large number of contractors to take printouts out of the Obamacare portal and manually enter the data in other health insurance systems because the backend integration is still not working. Multiple studies have demonstrated the average insurance rate has gone up in most states due to Obamacare. I will will be happy to dig up the state-by-state map and post it again. Personally my corporate coverage has gone up over 35% in 2015 while dropping to a 80% instead of a 100% plan - which our company states directly is due to ACA.
Most folks' rates went up every year before the ACA anyway. Rates are rising slower now. My company, admittedly likely much larger than yours, has seen minimal impact on costs for the ACA. It kept HR busier for a while, mainly last year. About it.
Lying by omission...rates can "slow" if the deductibles double or triple in most cases. Congrats, everybody now has a crappy catastrophic coverage plan. It would be nice if the card carrying dipshits around here would break from the narrative occasionally.
1) Wrong! Nobody wants to buy it? Hmmm I know quite a few who didn't want to buy it, myself included. When your premiums triple for inferior coverage there's not a person on this earth who would want it. 2) And what is the enrollment goal? But I guess putting a gun to people's heads and telling them they'll be fined if they don't sign up may have helped meet the goals. 3) The jury is out on this but in the end the costs to taxpayers will be astronomical and further increase the debt Odumbo has done such a good job at growing. 4) The website still has problems as noted on the day prior to the end of the signup persiod a few days ago. 5) Most who signed up already had coverage. the new ones .. mainly Medicaid signups who will now get free coverage paid for by us taxpayers. 6) What do they mean by this? We have a net loss in that our coverage is LESS than our prior policy. 7) Premiums did skyrocket. Uhh yes, this has happened. We went from $425.09 to $1242/month. And ..... if the Supreme Court whacks down the subsidies upwards of 80-90% will find it unaffordable when they lose premiums and most will drop coverage. 8) Odumbocare won't work longer term and financially solvent. But Odumbo has done more to increase the national debt than any President. That is something he has succeeded at. Whoever wrote the article is clueless.
Just like with anything if one shops around they can find a better price year to year if their rates increase too much. Over the last 10 years prior to our tripling of our premiums under Odumbo we went up a total of 5.2% which is about 1/2% per year. So 5.2% for 10 years and then a 192% increase this year. And there are plenty of others like ourselves who have experienced the same magnitude of increases. Who is being penalized? (1) healthy, fit people (2) people who work for a living and make more than the handout subsidy cutoff.
My corporate health plan rate (both my share and the totally payment by the company) have risen about 5% each year over the past two decades. This is over the rate of inflation, but we have never seen a 35% hike for coverage that we saw in 2015 due to ACA. And this was for less coverage, everyone was reduced to an 80% plan from a 100% EPO plan - because 100% plans are not offered anymore since they are "Cadillac" plans. I work for a company that is about 2000 people in total size.