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from the artcile:
Liberals justify these coercive
cross-subsidies as necessary to finance coverage for the uninsured and
those with pre-existing conditions. But government usually helps the
less fortunate honestly by raising taxes to fund programs. In summer
2009, Senate Democrats put out such a bill, and the $1.6 trillion
sticker shock led them to hide the transfers by forcing people to buy
overpriced products.
This political
mugging is especially unfair to the people whose plans on the current
individual market are being taken away. The majority of these consumers
are self-employed or small-business owners. They're middle class, rarely
affluent. They took responsibility for their care without government
aid, and unlike people in the job-based system, they paid with after-tax
dollars.
Now they're being punished for the crime of not subsidizing ObamaCare,
even though the individual market was never as dysfunctional or high
cost as liberals claim. In 2012, average U.S. individual premiums were
$190, ranging from a low of $123 in North Dakota to a high of $385 in
Massachusetts. Average premiums for family plans fell that year by 0.5%
to $412.
Those numbers come from the
13,000 different policies from 180 insurers sold on
eHealthInsurance.com, the online shopping brokerage that works.
(Technological wonders never cease.) Individuals can make the trade-offs
between costs and benefits for themselves. This wide variety is proof
that humans don't all want or need the same thing. If they did, there
would be no need for a market and government could satisfy everybody.
Source: WSJ Editorial, "ObamaCare's Plans Are Worse," The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2013
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