The Orange Blossom Special Train Wreck

Florida insurance regulators unveiled for the first time Wednesday the prices proposed by private insurers for individual health plans to be sold on the state’s federally-run exchange, which is scheduled to launch Oct. 1.

But the proposed health plans and prices — and the state’s analysis that federal healthcare reform would cause premiums to rise — were hardly definitive of the actual costs that Floridians are likely to pay for health insurance next year.

That’s because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has yet to approve the proposed health plans for Florida’s exchange, and those plans, including the prices, may change as they have in other states.

And while Florida insurance regulators said this week that the Affordable Care Act will cause the price of individual health plans sold in 2014 to rise 30 to 40 percent higher than similar plans sold today, and small group plan premiums could rise by 15 to 20 percent, they also conceded that those projections were based on a “hypothetical” health plan that does not exist anywhere in the state.

What’s more, the price projections released by the state do not factor in substantial government subsidies that will be available to many consumers based on household income, which will offset their actual out-of-pocket

-from the front page of today's Miami Herald.

Read carefully the "What's more" paragraph - an editorial gloss by your friendly journalists, who otherwise orchestrate the tone of this article into a "surely it won't be so bad" key.  Those "substantial government subsidies" come from the taxpayers and from those insureds paying the increased premiums, persons to whom those subsidies will not be available "based on household income."

But we shall see, won't we?  Sometime after the mid-term Congressional elections, of course.  One only hopes that the writers of this article (and their editors) will someday bear the full "out-of-pocket" impact of the AFA.

Dan Lopez, a "Young Invicible", is not Stupid

Dan Lopez rarely gets sick and hasn’t been to a doctor in 10 years, so buying health insurance feels like a waste of money.

Even after the federal health overhaul takes full effect next year, the 24-year-old said he will probably decide to pay the $100 penalty for those who skirt the law’s requirement that all Americans purchase coverage.

“I don’t feel I should pay for something I don’t use,” said the Milwaukee resident, who makes about $48,000 a year working two part-time jobs.

Because he makes too much to qualify for government subsidies, Lopez would pay a premium of about $3,000 a year if he chose to buy health insurance.

“I shouldn’t be penalized for having good health,” he said.

Persuading young, healthy adults such as Lopez to buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act is becoming a major concern for insurance companies as they scramble to comply with the law, which prohibits them from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and limits what they can charge to older policy holders.

Experts warn a lot of these so-called “young invincibles” could opt to pay the fine instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars each year on insurance premiums. If enough young adults avoid the new insurance marketplace, it could throw off the entire equilibrium of the Affordable Care Act. Insurers are betting on the business of that group to offset the higher costs they will incur for older, sicker beneficiaries.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/05/3486990/health-insurers-fear-young-people.html#storylink=cpy

"The Young Won't Buy Obamacare"

 [Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn't just asking them to pay for "the services that they are going to consume," he added. "The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."

Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?

-Holman Jenkins in today's WSJ.

A very sizable portion of the "somebody else" will be the Yuppie parents of the young people.  Pile this on top of the subsidy the young people are/will be paying to Social Security and other "entitlements".

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my children and their friends.

Controlling the Extravagent Demand for Medical Care

The medical economist Rashi Fein observed in 1986 that there are only three ways to limit the extravagant demand for medical care: "Inconvenience," the practice used in the military, where one must wait interminably for care. "Rules," the third-party approach by which layers of rules and thousands of regulations are devised, most recently in a fool's quest to contain costs under ObamaCare. And "Price." This last option elicits gasps and chest-clutching from bien pensants who insist that all financial impediments to care must be removed. Yet it has one incontestably beneficial attribute: It requires the physician to study the true cost and benefits of a course of action, and then to present that data to the patient. Who is better suited than the patient to assess the value to him of the proposed treatment? Kathleen Sebelius? You gotta be kidding. [Link added]

-from "Reflections of a Medical Ex-Practioner", by Ed Marsh, in yesterday's WSJ.  (Thanks, Carol.)

Pennsylvania College Slashes Employees Hours to Avoid ObamaCare

"The move will save an estimated $6 million."

Thanks, Instapundit.

This is going to happen a lot and it won't be limited to institutions of higher learning and to part-timers.  See Tate, ObamaCare Survival Guide, pp. 111-113.

Oops! Sorry, Boomers, about Medicare.

Having had it so good growing up in the post-war boom times (Viet-Nam for some, but certainly not all of us, being the exception), we've been looking forward to our pensions (if we've had government jobs for governments still able to pay them), Social Security, and, finally, Medicare.  Medicare is a biggie, and whatever gaps there might be in it would be filled up by our buying supplemental insurance, something called "Medicare Advantage."  None of that is going to happen, however, as we may have counted upon it happening.

According to the recently published, ObamaCare Survival Guide: the Affordable Care Act and What it Means for You and Your Healthcare, by Nick J. Tate:

• "[H]undreds of billions of dollars in funding for ObamaCare will be generated by cuts in Medicare's budget over the next decade."  (What?! Ryan was right??!!)
• A  "reduced number of plans [will be] available and reduced benefits [will be provided] in the Medicare Advantage program."
• "[R]educed payment rates [will be paid] to doctors who care for Medicare patients."  Tate notes that "If doctors, hospitals, and other providers react negatively when they are paid less, some may refuse to see Medicare patients, making it more difficult for some to find a doctor or see the one they're accustomed to using."  Ya think?
• Cost controls will be imposed on what Medicare will pay for, controls to be imposed in January 2018 by "a new presidential commission called the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB.  .  .  This board will be given significant power to cut Medicare spending in the future because its decisions will automatically take effect unless counteracted by Congress.  That will be hard to do as it will require a three-fifths 'super-majority' vote in the U.S. Senate."

On page 48 of Tate's book, he writes this:

The biggest losers under ObamaCare are Medicare recipients.  Senior citizens are thrown a bone with the closure of the "donut hole" in the program's prescription drug plan, but that will not offset the hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts over the next decade.  And once the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) beings to operate, additional cuts seem likely.

A healthy diet, exercise, and other good health habits, then, are really not optional.  If one has been thinking that several visits a month to this health provider or that will help one pass the time during one's golden retirement years, then it is high time to change that thinking.   We have a Brave New World here.  Acts have consequences after all.