By Peter Ferrara, Contributor
The great American experiment in democracy is currently failing. In proof of that, I give you Exhibit A: We cannot even agree on the basic fact of whether health insurance premiums are rising or falling under Obamacare. Note, this is not a matter even of opinion. It is a matter of simple fact, right or wrong. But if we can’t agree on what the basic facts are, we cannot analyze Obamacare, or even discuss it intelligently.
The problem began with contentious California bureaucrats running the California Obamacare Exchange, named Covered California. They released the rates that insurance companies bid to sell the required insurance to individual purchasers on the California Obamacare Exchange. See if you can immediately spot the dishonest fallacy in the key summary statement in the Covered California press release: “The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market ranged from 2 percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”
This is like a California Chevy dealer in a year when the price of new Chevys has soared, issuing a press release that says, “The prices for new Chevy autos and trucks this year ranged from 2 percent above to 29 percent below the average price this year for new Cadillac autos and trucks in California’s most populous regions.”
Actually, it is worse even than that. Because the Covered California press release compared the prices of individual insurance to the prices for small business insurance, it is more like a Chevy dealer press release that says, “The prices for new Chevy autos and trucks this year ranged from 2 percent above to 29 percent below the average price this year for new small buses and dump trucks.”
But that misstatement of the basic facts is all it took for media organs of Leftist so-called Progressivism to crank up the celebratory pipes. Peter Lee, Executive Director of the Covered California Exchange kicked off the dishonest, misleading rhetoric, proclaiming regarding the newly announced rates, “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California.” He reached that conclusion by comparing Yankee Stadium home runs to Lambeau Field touchdowns.
Next up to bat at the free throw line was logic arsonist Paul Krugman, whose writing always makes you feel like the First Amendment was a mistake. On the basis of the data comparing apples to Orangutans, he concluded that “the real Obamacare shock will be one of unexpected success,” explaining that the ultimate result of Obamacare will be “millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all.”
He overlooks the equal millions of Americans that will suddenly not get health coverage under “universal” Obamacare, the millions more who will choose not to get health insurance “secure knowing that such coverage is available” if they get sick later, the tens of millions who will lose their employer provided health insurance, regardless of whether they like that coverage or not, the millions more who will lose their full time jobs for part time jobs with lower incomes and no benefits, becoming truly middle class in the Obama/Krugman era, where middle class is just another word for declining real incomes, and the millions more who will be denied access to the best health practitioners and facilities, and to the new, innovative, health care breakthroughs that were never financed, under the restrictive Obamacare choices allowed by the social justice of “progressive,” political health care.
Krugman reveals his true “Progressivism,” saying the end result will be that “the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious,” argument collapsing into sheer name calling being the hallmark of a truly “progressive” discussion.
The simplest and most direct discussion of the issue, failing to grasp any relevant distinctions at all, was provided by my fellow Forbes contributor Rick Ungar, who reported in one of his columns, echoing of course Krugman, “Upon reviewing the data, I was indeed shocked by the proposed premium rates, but not in the way you might expect. The jolt that I was experiencing was not the result of out-of-control premium costs but the shock of rates far lower than what I expected – even at the lowest end of the age scale.” Either Ungar failed to understand the distinction between Chevys and Cadillacs, or between the family Chevy and a bus, or he decided that the truly progressive course was to play along with the California bureaucrat misrepresentation, rather than disclose the fallacy to his readers. Apple or Orange, Rick?
But Ungar went on to explain, “what we are now seeing in states like California is that the desire on the part of the health insurance companies to increase market share – thanks to the large influx of customers as a result of Obamacare – is driving prices downward.” We will see about that large influx of customers. Personally, I am not buying an Obamacare policy until I am sick, and I am already well over 40 years old. And I don’t expect to be paying any penalty for that decision either.
It took Avik Roy to explain the real story in his column, also at Forbes. He examined health insurance policies currently offered on the unofficial, private sector, non-political ehealthinsurance exchange and concluded, “Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums by as much as 146 percent.”
“[F]or the typical 25 year old male non-smoking Californian,” Roy added, “Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.” For a 40 year old male non-smoker” Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.” Roy summarized, “For both 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds, then, Californians under Obamacare who buy insurance for themselves will see their insurance premiums double.” That is a conservative understatement of his actual results.
But Ungar responded in his next column, objecting to Roy’s methodology with Alinskyite ridicule: “my first reaction was to laugh. eHealthinsurance.com? Seriously?” Ungar’s complaint was that Roy’s comparisons were based on so-called “teaser rates” on the eHealthinsurance website, explaining “I mean, you don’t have to be a healthcare policy expert to know that websites like eHealthinsurance.com always flash low rates in front of you—prices that maybe one person in a thousand might actually hope to achieve—to tickle the interest of a potential customer.” That “knowledge” is based on what?
Ungar continued, “It’s not that the flashing low prices are necessarily false as there is always going to be someone who can qualify for the exceptionally low rate.” But “have you ever suffered a migraine headache? If you have, be prepared for a substantial increase over the teaser price stated on a website like eHealthinsurance.com. Ever experience a summer of hay fever? Your rate will skyrocket as a result. Did you have acne as a teenager? Uh-oh…price is going up.”
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
