Associated Press is very slow out of the gate on this one; we have known this for quite some time.
Associated Press: Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says hishealth care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print.
Premiums are likely to keep going up even if the health care billpasses, experts say. If cost controls work as advertised, annual increases would level off with time. But don't look for a rollback. Instead, the main reason premiums would be more affordable is that new government tax credits would help millions of people who can't afford the cost now.
Listening to Obama pitch his plan, you might not realize that's how it works.
[SNIP]
An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of earlier Senate legislation suggested savings could be fairly modest.
It found that large employers would see premium savings of at most 3 percent in 2016, compared with what their costs would have been without the legislation. That would be more like a few hundred dollars instead of several thousand.
The claim that people buying coverage individually would save 14 percent to 20 percent comes from the same budget office report, prepared in November for Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind. But the presidential sound bite fails to convey the full picture.
The budget office concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they'd reach without the legislation. That's mainly because policies in the individual insurance market would provide more comprehensive benefits than they do today.
Anyone who listens to Obama’s sales pitch without reading the actual bill is a damn fool and an idiot. Reading just a portion of the Senate bill one would immediately realize it is nothing like what Obama has been selling.
The true goal behind ObamaCare is to wreck havoc with private insurance companies by mandating the type of coverage they must provide. Obviously as the demands rack up, the costs increase to the point where it becomes impossible for private insurance to function. Then the only viable answer becomes single payer.
The stupid thing about this backdoor plan to single payer is that given the political costs and all the legislative gymnastics to get this far, they would have been far better off just ramming single payer down our throats from the get go.
Via: Memeorandum
Via: Associated Press
Graphic: Mako Snark