Premiums to Skyrocket Under Obamacare

Millions of consumers will suffer skyrocketing insurance premiums next year due to "indirect taxes" contained in both the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform, according to various medical and insurance industry experts.

Healthcare reforms that were supposed to contain costs will actually cause a sharp hike in premiums, they add. In fact, several studies indicate consumers' premiums could more than double next year if healthcare reform takes effect.

"So even though this bill tries to hide these costs as indirect taxes," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, recently told a business symposium, "average Americans who purchase health plans, take prescription drugs, or use medical devices will end up footing the bill." Full Story

According to the Senate's Joint Committee on Taxation, for example, the Finance Committee's proposal would assess $322 billion in taxes and fees on insurance premiums, prescription drugs, and medical devices.

The Committee and other experts say virtually all of those costs will be passed along to consumers in all tax brackets – despite President Barack Obama's pledge not to raise taxes "one dime" on those earning less than $250,000 per year.

Another likely frustration for consumers: The premium hikes will take effect right away, while the subsidies and benefits in healthcare reform won't completely kick in until 2014.

Scott Gottlieb, a physician and American Enterprise Institute resident fellow, stated Thursday in a New York Post op-ed that by front-loading the costs and back-loading benefits, Congress is resorting to "a gimmick that imposes a stiff price on the public."

That "gimmick," according to Gottlieb: Using 10 years of added fees and taxes on providers to offset about five years worth of benefits. Those costs "will immediately shift onto consumers, in the form of higher prices on medical products and rising premiums," he says. Full Story

 

47% of people either pay zero OR COLLECT money from the tax system.

Do ya think we are 3% from the end?

Isn't destroying the middle class the goal, so I hear?  What is going to happen when there is no more middle class?

 Log, have you information to the contrary?

I do not know what or who this is "pointed" at, but let me ask you a question. Let's say you owned a company that employed 100 people. Your average medical package cost you $15,000.00 per employee. Then one day you find out that you can legally pay a fine to the government for not providing insurance to your employees. The cost is between $2,500.00 and $6,500.00 per employee. What would you do? Would you pay the government $650,000.00 (using the highest fine) or would you pay $1,500,000.00 for coverage?


So, what would you do?

Option A. $650,00.00
Option B. $1,500,000.00

What do you think the government would want? An extra $650,000.00 in the health care coffer? Plus another paying member of the government insurance? A win-win for everybody involved.

Am I being delusional? That my friend is business 101. They win, we lose. Simple as that.

Capitalism....they have tried communism before...it has failed each time.

In Christ,
KP

An interesting observation.  Where in human history has communism provided the benefits of capitalism to the world? Which form of societal governance has provided the "worst" and "best" for humanity?  Surely both forms have pluses and minuses and both have mechanisms to deal with those pluses and minuses.

I appreciate your well-reasoned examples based on facts. Here is what you're talking about:

[source]

So in our current system, those of us who buy private insurance pay 129% of the costs while those on medicare pay 92% and those on medicaid pay 87% of cost. If as you predict a huge segment of the population would switch from private plans to a public option, this inequality would not be sustainable and it would naturally fix itself so that payments were more in line with costs. So if there are winners and losers in this system one group of losers would include the individuals and businesses that are forced to pay 30% more on their premiums--especially those who can barely afford to do so. Also even though these numbers are probably pretty rough you can see that the deficit of Medicare and Medicaid does not make up for the 30% above cost that private insurance pays.

Although making health care accessible and affordable should in my opinion be a huge priority, we also need a system that is still competitive and produces innovation and expertise. This occurs through economic incentives and profit. The problem with our current system is that the incentives are skewed. Who is currently receiving the most incentive and profit from our current way of paying for health care? Its not the hospitals or the doctors or the researchers, or even the government. Part of that extra 30% for private insurance beyond cost is profit for the insurance company. I have no problem with profit, but do we have a vested interest in keeping the insurance providers themselves profitable? Does giving them incentives provide the sorts of competition in our health care industry that makes us healthier? I don't believe so. So we need a way to divert profit and incentives to the people and actions that actually make us better. For example, we pay doctors for blocks of time and for types of procedures rather than for keeping or making someone healthy. So the system has morphed into an elaborate scheme where doctors schedule several patents for the same exact time and then all these patients sit in little rooms and wait for the doctor to pop in for 5 minutes and the more people the doctor sees in an hour the more insurance money he or she will get. Also since they get more money for doing elaborate expensive procedures then there is a tenancy to focus the system toward those rather than on simple preventative things. There are also unnecessary or redundant tests being done especially when multiple doctors are working with a patient and not sharing information or if there is fear of a future lawsuit. Anyway, the discussion is far more nuanced than simply capitalism vs communism--our system has certain customs and traditions that are not based on market necessities and the government is already heavily involved and must be in order to provide security for elderly and indigent.

As far as medicare goes, perhaps it is not paying its share at the moment but that's only because they can get away with doing it and its part of what will have to change. Most people though are very pleased with their medicare. Something like 60-70% of people in the program [source]