Monday, May 16, 2011

A Small Taste Of Obamacare

I'm opposed to Obamacare but I always kind of thought it wouldn't impinge on me personally for a few years. I know, that's a naive thought but I did think it...until today. Today I got what I think is a small taste of Obamacare.

Today at work we learned that some changes are taking place in our company health benefits. To put it simply, our health insurance is getting more expensive. Our premiums are going up, new surcharges will apply under certain conditions and, worst of all to me, the co-pay system has been abolished. Instead, we will have to pay the contract cost for doctor's visits and procedures until our deductible is paid. After that we will pay 20% of the cost of visits and procedures. Like I said, our health care is getting more expensive. Didn't Obama promise Americans just the opposite?

The costly changes that my company is making to its health benefits is an example of the unintended(?) consequences of government intervention in health care and the free market. Two Obamacare policies appear to be driving my company's health benefits shake up. Those policies are the requirements for health insurance companies to provide free preventative care and to let parents carry their children on their health plans until those children are 26 years old (and there are no restrictions on these adult kids; they can be married and have kids of their own and still be eligible for their parents' health coverage).

On the surface these policies seem compassionate. What's wrong with free preventative care? What's wrong with letting parents keep their twenty-something kids on their health insurance plan? What's wrong is that somebody has to pay for these "reforms". "Free" preventative care is free only to the patient; it still costs money to the doctors, clinics, and hospitals who deliver that care, and that costs money to the insurance company. Likewise, forcing insurers to take on droves of new customers will raise their cost of doing business. How will insurance companies pay for these new expenses? By passing them onto consumers in the form of higher premiums, new charges, and/or reduced services. Nothing very compassionate about that.

The Founding Fathers were right not to make social welfare the responsibility of the federal government. In almost every instance, government "help" winds up creating more problems than it solves. In the case of Obamacare, federal "compassion" means that my co-workers and I will end up a bit poorer and possibly a bit less healthy. And all because Barak Obama cares.

I really wish he didn't.

5 comments:

Tapline said...

your cost and everyone elses...My daughter told me her health insurance went up again last week. This is all geared to the new healthcare law that our lawmakers keep kicking along...They won't defund it so I guess we are stuck with it....I have just been informed that my free for life healthcare will be going up again.....When I re-enlisted in the military a FEW years ago, an incentive for re-uping was free healthcare for me and my family at retirement.(no strings attached). The supreme court has spoken to the isssue and said it was never intended to be that way..Well....That's not the way it was stated more than once to me and every0ne else.(long story short). I'm paying for my healthcare and have for many years......stay well....

Anonymous said...

It seems that everytime that Obama opens his mouth, it costs us poor folk more money. Maybe we should get a good surgeon that we know, to go and sew Obama's mouth shut so he cant' do anymore damage till he is voted out in November of 2012. Sorry this is costing you more.

WomanHonorThyself said...

more and more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for terrorists and bums and less and less for the private sector..ack!

Skunkfeathers said...

Obama hellthscare is merely the worst and most devastating ideas of the libtards, in a long and unfailing list of abject failures that libtards cherish, ONLY because enacting them all will increase the dependency class, and put that class at the feet of command and control libtards. Which is exactly what they want.

Tom said...

Yep, penalize the hard workers and reward the slackers...