Reports of various problems with the Obamacare exchanges continue to roll in. Nancy Jean Beigel, last seen in the Rose Garden being exploited with and by President Obama, is a prime example of someone who the president claimed would benefit from ObamaCare, but immediately encountered problems when she tried to enroll.
Beigel told the Washington Post she tried for two days to sign up before giving up for now. “It’s a little confusing,” she said. And Jean isn’t the only one.
Others, many who have gotten letters from their insurance carriers telling them exactly how much they will pay, are fretting over Obamacare for different reasons.
Tom Gialanella from Seattle, WA, who is self-employed, told reporters from Fox News “my premiums would increase approximately 61 percent. I went from $891 a month to $1437 dollars a month. And also my deductibles all doubled.”
The letter Gialanella received from his insurer said his current deductible for his family of five was going to double from $4,000 a year to $8,000.
And that’s for the Bronze Plan, which is the least expensive option in the ObamaCare exchanges. He says his additional payment of$550 a month will give him a plan that is no better than what he already has. Also, it also it carries a benefits that his family does not need, including maternity and newborn care.
“My wife is 58 years old and our youngest child is soon to be 18,” says Gialanella. “We’ll be having no more children. That is not a benefit that we would ever purchase nor need or be able to use.”
Gialanella is almost 60, himself, and makes too much money to get any subsidies. But those Gialanella’s age aren’t the only ones affected, because this is how collectivist policies are designed, when centralized planners consider how best to govern in the private affairs of citizens. Nobody is an individual, we all have to have so-called qualified plans, which are standardized by bureaucrats, whether you need it or not or can afford it or not.
Young people, especially but not limited to young men, can face huge premium increases.
Chris Holt of the conservative American Action Forum says, “we said let’s look at what the lowest cost Bronze Plan is and compare that to the lowest cost plan that I can buy today. And what we found is that it will go up about 260 percent for a 30-year-old male.”
Recent reports have made prior studies conducted to predict costs under Obamcare credible, particularly from the Manhattan Institute, which showed that the Midwest indicated increases of more than 100 percent..
Holt won’t see an increase quite that much, but the problem is that young people will be forced to buy more benefits than they might be willing to pay for, as a recent survey by Gallup found.
“For young adults, Holt said of one recent survey, “if they saw 30 percent increase in their insurance premiums – these are the ones that already had coverage – 45 percent of them said they would drop coverage.”
Only two states in the country – New Jersey and Massachusetts – have rate increases for that age group that are lower than 30 percent.
The subsidies in ObamaCare are not exactly very generous at lower income levels, either.
For any young person making more than $20,000 a year, insurance premiums – which does not even count deductibles totaling in the several thousand dollars – would cost more than paying the penalty for not getting insurance.
That raises the prospect of young people deciding the plan makes no sense for them.
That possibility could be critical, because the administration is counting on signing up enough young, healthy people to offset the cost for the older and less healthy.
If that doesn’t happen, as is typically the case in collectivist health care, the costs of ObamaCare could soar.
Obamacare “only works … if young people show up,” admitted former President Bill Clinton in a recent MSNBC interview.
It’s why Obamacare supporters and government agencies are trying everything from sports advertising to video contests to get young people in the game.
But will those millions of Millennials show up and sign up for health insurance under the Obamcare? And considering recent statements made by Democratic leaders regarding an intentional step to single-payer, totally socialized medicine, is that really the government’s desire? Or would they rather just collapse the exchanges, the private insurance market – as they did with housing – so that the government can rush to our aid in a crisis with a single-payer option?
Of course, it wouldn’t exactly be an option, because in crisis government takeovers are always sold as the only option.
A recent Reuters poll found Obamacare may not attract enough young people to keep costs low for others. And according to Fox’s small sampling, the answer would be no.
“An entire generation is being turned into a part-time workforce” because of Obamacare, said 22-year-old Patrick Richardson, a senior at the University of Toledo in Ohio who considers himself fortunate to have health insurance through his employer.
Perhaps young people are discovering they have another option after all?
