Posted on 02/11/2012 9:01:36 AM PST by nicmarlo
Medical insurance premiums in the United States are on the rise, the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has told The Daily Caller.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms.
In an email to The Daily Caller, Gruber framed this new reality in terms of the same human self-interest that some conservatives had warned in 2010 would ultimately rule the marketplace.
“The market was so discriminatory,” Gruber told TheDC, “that only the healthy bought non-group insurance and the sick just stayed [uninsured].”
“It is true that even after tax credits some individuals are ‘losers,’” he conceded, “in that they pay more than before [Obama's] reform.”
Gruber, whom the Obama administration hired to provide an independent analysis of reforms, was widely criticized for failing to disclose the conflict of interest created by $392,600 in no-bid contracts the Department of Health and Human Services awarded him while he was advising the president’s policy advisers.
Gruber also received $566,310 during 2008 and 2009 from the [NIH] to conduct a study on the Medicare Part D plan. (RELATED: Full coverage of the health reform law)
In 2011, officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado ordered reports from Gruber which offer a drastically different portrait in 2012 from the one Obama painted just 17 months ago.
“As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act,” the president said in September 2010, ”premiums are going to be lower than they would be otherwise; health care costs overall are going to be lower than they would be otherwise.”
[SNIP]
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
During his presentation to Wisconsin officials in August 2011, Gruber revealed that while about 57 percent of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit in one way or another from the law’s subsides, an even larger majority of the individual market will end up paying drastically more overall.
“After the application of tax subsidies, 59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent,” Gruber reported.
Who can you say is consistant in saying in every speech he gives he will KILL THIS BILL after being sworn in?
What has Obamacare done to increase the number of doctors? or nurses? Nothing.
Has Obamacare convinced some doctors and nurses to retire early? Certainly yes.
Has Obamacare convinced some young people that the medical professions might not be a good career path? Certainly yes.
The supply of medical resources in this country is not increasing sufficiently.
The demand for medical resources in this country is certainly increasing -- Obamacare? That means it's all free, right? Give me summa that! I've got insurance! I'm all set!
Of courses prices are increasing. What else can one expect? Unless, of course, one is completely ignorant of the law of supply and demand.
I just had a steep increase this year. Guess I am to expect another....then another....and another until I can no longer afford it.
Fire Obama or you won’t HAVE any healthcare.
Then, institute tort reform and allow interstate competition among insurers.
Holding an insurance card, is NOT the same as having Health Care!
Fire Obama!
See this guy’s discussion of the budget fraud and his Joe South song “Games The Administration Play”
and we know that Obummer is gravely ignorant of the law of supply and demand. Unless he mistakenly thinks that he is the Emperor of that as well and it will bow to his will, too.
The increase on mine hit at the first of the year. And it was steep. And to make it even more frustrating, I work for one of the largest HC insurance providers.
But at least it appears that Gruber may understand Econ 101 a little better today than he did before. When the government tries to play market-maker, the result is always higher prices and eventually the destruction of the market altogether.
“...until I can no longer afford it.”
And then you go on the Government plan. Which you won’t be able to afford either. But tough crap...you will still be required by law to pay for it.
It’s all according to plan.
Good news. Higher premiums mean the individual mandate is that much more impractical.
NEWT!!
Let’s hope that SCOTUS see that to be the case, as well (beyond the fact that this is, on its face, unConstitutional).
thanks for the link; will review that tonight!
They don't call it 'The Affordable Healthcare Act' for nothing you know. Who you gonna believe; Obamass or your lying insurance premiums?
The fact is that any model that Gruber used relies upon estimates of parameters whose values are actually unknown and unknowable. And, as Rummy understood but many journalists could not grasp, such models almost certainly exclude parameters whose very existence is currently unknown.
None of this, however, bothers Obama’s economists. Medical insurance premiums may indeed escalate after ObamaCare fully kicks in. But, like the number of “jobs saved or created” by stimulus spending, Team Obama will spin the news with “expert” claims that premiums are lower under ObamaCare based upon model results rather than real-world data. The parameters for those models are easily adjusted to obtain a favorable conclusion for the MSM to eat up and mindlessly regurgitate. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans, who have no direct exposure to purchasing medical insurance because it has been mostly provided by employers, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or other government programs, is susceptible to believing the MSM propaganda.
Of course, it is apodictically certain that the cost of health care will rise under ObamaCare until such time that its provisions are effectively applied to ration health care services. One does not need a quantitative economic model to be sure of this. All one has to know is that ObamaCare takes economic decisions away from individual consumers and imposes a government edict. ObamaCare will certainly cause either an increase in health care costs or a reduction in the quality and quantity of health care. Most likely both.
AGAIN people learn that communism only works in THEORY. It always has been and always will be the assumption that masses will behave a certain way to obtain YOUR version of Utopia is the downfall of the concept.
Seems this fella learned that lesson in his calculations after human nature proved itself to do what it always does.
“But, like the number of “jobs saved or created” by stimulus spending, Team Obama will spin the news with “expert” claims that premiums are lower under ObamaCare based upon model results rather than real-world data.”
And sadly the idiots in this country will pay the tripled price for insurance and watch ‘the news’ to react by sighing and saying “I guess it’s just me. Oh well, it’s for the good of the country.” I read idiotic statements like that all the time on news articles and it just irritates the crap out of me.
Tell me about it ,My premium went up 2 thousand Dollars this year already
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