Despite vehemently supporting increased health care costs via ObamaCare, Harvard professionals are now furious they are forced to pay. In November, the members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences made a last-minute attempt to avoid changes to Harvard’s health care plan that would put them in the barrel with million of Main Street, working Americans.
Unfortunately, for them, the faculty vote came too late to have an impact.
Professor Richard Thomas, who teaches the Classics, called it “deplorable” and “deeply regressive.” Another one of his colleagues complained it was “the equivalent of a pay cut.”
Under the previous plan, Harvard employees paid only a portion of their premiums and had very low out-of-pocket costs. However, due to the changes forced by ObamaCare, which left-wing institutions argued was “progressive,” employees will have to pay 10 percent of health care costs until the $1,500 limit is reached for an individual, or $4,500 for a family.
The irony of it all, is that Harvard’s increased costs still remain far lower than most employers’ health care costs under ObamaCare.
According to a PPD study, which was conducted prior to the unilateral delays and exemptions, just 18.3 percent of working Americans are covered by health insurance plans that are not subject to the employer mandate out of the 170.9 million Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.
The increases should’ve come as no surprise to the American intelligentsia, as a study conducted by healthcare analysts at Morgan Stanley in April of 2014 found health insurance premiums increased at the highest rate ever measured by the firm. The survey of 148 brokers concluded health insurance premiums increase under ObamaCare because of ObamaCare, blatantly stating “increases are largely due to changes under the ACA.”
Harvard elitists aren’t the only voices expression deep disappointment in law’s inability to control costs.
Healthcare advocate and policy analyst, Steven Brill, once a staunch supporter of ObamaCare, told CBS This Morning on Monday that everyone except the taxpayer benefited from the president’s signature health care law.
Brill, the author of America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System, said “there’s nothing in the legislation that brings down the cost of healthcare.”
“We basically have created a system where the good news is that many more people get the kind of healthcare you and I get,” Brill added. “The bad news is that the taxpayers are paying for it and they’re paying the same exorbitant prices that make the system so unworkable.”
Brill went on to say that the bill was not designed to control the cost of healthcare, nor was it designed to help the working class Americans who arguably deserve the biggest break. The very poor and the corporate benefit the most from the law, while Main Street and other working, taxpaying Americans get the shaft.
“The best test of all this is the only way that a bill this big will pass in Washington is if the powers that be, you know, decide that it should pass. So the drug companies are making more money, the hospitals are making more money, the medical device makers are making more money and everybody is happy except the taxpayer,” Brill said Monday morning.
