My good friend Frank Stephenson, chairman of the Economics Department at Berry College in Georgia, has this post on his blog:
A former student’s comments on his FB page:
My current health insurance is illegal under the Health Care Reform legislation just signed into law. My deductible is higher than the maximum $2000/individual deductible allowed under Section 1302(c)(2)(A)(i). Paying the first several thousand dollars of my health care each year encourages me to shop around and be price conscious in my health care spending. Why is the gov’t discouraging this?
My health plan is neither bad nor irresponsible, and I am very happy with it. I pay very low premiums and self-insure with my own savings and by depositing a portion of my paycheck into a Health Savings Account which rolls over every year (and is quickly approaching the size of my annual deductible). I’ve found that I often get quoted a wide range of prices when I shop around, and am usually quoted a much lower rate when I tell them I am paying out of pocket.
This gets at the heart of why, unless it resorts to death panel style rationing, Obamacare won’t “bend the cost curve.” Instead of reducing the role of third party payments, the new law leads to even more third party payment.
