Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Covering California Exchange Director Tries to Hide the True cost of Obamacare

On Saturday, May 29th the Santa Cruz Sentinel ran the editorial piece, "Covering Californians: Lower costs than expected on Obamacare Exchange." The data was released by  Peter Lee, the Executive Director of Covering Californian, the state’s Obamacare  exchange: "While administrative confusion over the complicated health care law is inevitable, the fears over Obamacare don't seem justified based on the prices Covered California insurers will charge for people signing up...When Covered California announced last week the prices of policies that will be offered through the exchange next year, the prices came in higher than some may like, but lower than most predictions from Obamacare opponents."

However it is now being reported by Forbes the prices were purposely deceptive and Lee was making misleading comparison(s) to hide the real costs; Lee was only quoting group plans, but if a person wants to buy an individual plan, the stated purpose and reason for Obamacare, than the increase will be 46%-125%. This especially true of those under or over their 30's where the premiums will at a minimum double.

Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261.
But on eHealthInsurance, the median cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.

Does anyone remember that Obamacare was supposed to lower prices? Anyone? So at this point would the Sentinel editorial board agree that maybe the fears over Obamacare are justified?

Another issue not brought up by Lee, is that the demands of  Obamacare even on employee provided healthcare. Because Obamacare has increased the minimum amount of coverage provided by employers to a Bronze level, many minimum wage service employers that traditionally only offered a cheaper catastrophic plan, have been forced to reduce their employees hours to less than 30, so they will not be required to pay for the higher priced plans demanded by Obamacare. The end result will be the end of full time employment in the US service industry and fewer employees being covered by heath plans.



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