Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Here's something we haven't talked about in a while


It's a double-whammy of ObamaCare/Nick Gillespie fun today, gang.


First up, Nick, sporting the leather, with Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute at FreedomFest in Vegas.




This is going to kill innovation. Instead of trying to figure out how to provide care faster, better, cheaper... but now everybody is looking over their shoulder trying to figure out how to comply with this new federal regulation, this new federal rule. We already have thousands of pages of regulations that have come down as a result of the passage of this law almost a year and half ago.




And now, Nick, sans leather, sitting down with Glenn Morton.

ObamaCare is set up so that if the federal government needs more money to fund that high level of contribution they can take it from anyone, even people that have not purchased health insurance. No employer can duplicate that level of contribution. Ultimately everybody is going to go into the exchange(s).
In projecting the program’s costs, the Congressional Budget Office figures that about 7 percent of the workforce currently covered by employer-provided insurance will drop those policies and sign up for the subsidized insurance. That estimate – and hence, the cost structure of the program – has been challenged by sources such as McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, which reckons a far higher percentage of workers will opt out of their current job-based plans. In a survey of employers released in June, McKinsey found that 30 percent will “definitely or probably” drop their coverage as Obamacare kicks into high gear in 2014. Among “employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion rises to more than 50 percent,” says the report. Why? It will be cheaper to pay fines than to provide coverage. If those estimates are accurate, the cost savings ObamaCare supporters tout are a pipe dream.
And when this moment of realization arrives in 2014, we will have yet one more unsustainable entitlement program on our hands. The solution: Remove the middle men, whether it's the government or the employer so that there is greater transparency as to what health care actually costs so that the individual can make better informed decisions as to what to spend his money on with respect to health care. A high deductible/low premium, Chinese menu-style manner of coverage is our idea of a health care plan. But we guess those types of decisions aren't ours to make anymore. It's about the freedom, stupid.

2 comments:

Harrison said...

Gillespie is often a guest on Redeye on Fox News and he is a bright fellow not given to take things lightly. He is also more of a Libertarian than anything else so he often gets attacked by the Left even though he has gone to bat many times for some of their causes.

Dean said...

I think the Left hates this guy more than anything else because he goes after their sacred cows: entitlement programs.