The Closer One Looks At Obamacare, The More It Looks Like Medicaid

The Closer One Looks At Obamacare, The More It Looks Like Medicaid

By Scott Gottlieb & Tom Miller (Forbes)

"...Cconsumers should consider the kind of health insurance that they would get under the President’s plan.So far, President Obama is withholding the final set of regulations that describe just what health benefits the Obamacare plans will deliver. He may be waiting until after the election. But there’s enough detail already in the law to make decent estimates.

The answer turns out to get a lot worse, the closer one looks. There’s good reason to believe that in short order, the health plans sold in Obamacare’s heavily regulated, state-based insurance exchanges will degrade into something akin to today’s Medicaid managed care plans...

If a lot of consumers who presently get their health coverage at work are dumped into these state exchanges (as many independent analysts predict), then tens of millions of Americans could find that they’re worse off under the new law and that their health benefits have been substantially devalued...

..The President’s mislabeled “Affordable Care” Act is structured in a way to almost guarantee that the quality of the health coverage offered in the exchanges must erode over time...

.. by benchmarking the Obamacare plans off a standard set of benefits, the only incentive plans have is to drive down their premiums, mostly by driving down what they pay to providers, just like Medicaid operates. ..That means clamping down on things such as the quality of networks and providers..."

State Update from Vermont via Vermonters For Health Care Freedom

"In VT, not only have we set up an exchange, but we are FORCING individuals and small businesses under 50 employees into the exchange to purchase their insurance. VT is the only state to do this and DC recently followed us! I think the states that do not set up the exchanges will be magnets for small businesses. The small businesses in VT forced into the exchange will see their premiums soar for heavily regulated insurance in 2014. We do not have much individual freedom and liberty in VT! Keep up the fight in PA! Keep your individual freedom and liberty that we do not seem to have in VT!

The reason VT is forcing individuals and businesses into the exchange is that they are hoping for businesses to "dump" their employees in the exchange, so that they can obtain their federal subsidies to help fund VT"s "single payer"! We passed single payer in VT in 2010 without saying how to fund it in this already highly taxed state with the lowest GDP per worker (recent Fraser Institute study)!

Plus the insurance in the exchange may be more like Medicaid....
More here:
The Closer One Looks At Obamacare, The More It Looks Like Medicaid