Life In The Age Of Obamacare

Regarding "Premiums offer hope to Houstonians" (Sunday Page A19), the very first example of likely coverage options for people without insurance and what they would pay under the Affordable Health Care Act explains in vivid detail why Obamacare will be an unmitigated disaster.  Laura Ante is a 60-year-old Houstonian homeowner with diabetes.  Private insurance is too expensive, but she doesn't qualify for subsidies because she owns her home. 

 

Even if she dumps her house, her total personal assets also have to fall to a poverty level before she will qualify for a subsidized plan.  Assuming she squanders most of her personal wealth until she is poor, her yearly contribution for a Bronze plan would then be $834; taxpayers would pay the other $7,357 per year.  The problem is that Ms. Ante would still need to pony up for 40% of all her health care costs under the Bronze plan.  As has been amply documented, the cost of medical care in America - from prescriptions to hospital visits to surgery - is more than twice as costly as in Canada or Europe, so in essence, Ms. Ante would be effectively paying for all of her own health care costs, with the $8,100 yearly policy being a gift to the insurance companies and the medical cartels.

 

It gets worse: As we've seen in the past year, Obamacare is the primary reason for the loss of millions of full time jobs, and the creation of the part-time low-wage job culture, so there's a good chance Ms. Ante's $18,500 job will either go away or that her wages will be reduced.  Either way, she will then officially be "poor", will qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and will cease to be a taxpaying member of society. 

 

So in summary, Obamacare destroys home ownership, creates 30 million insurance policies that don't afford recipients any significant benefits, dumps the bulk of the cost for those policies on taxpayers, gives Ms. Ante no incentive at all to save for retirement, and forces her to allocate the bulk of her take-home pay to health care costs.  On top of that, the base of employees that Obamacare relies on to pay for Obamacare will be vastly eroded, as will the property tax base.  Finally, the cost of medical care and insurance policies will continue to skyrocket.

 

It's hard to imagine how the Democrats could have devised a more destructive policy.  

 

Pete Smith, Cypress