Manhattan Institute senior fellow Avik Roy devotes a Forbes magazine column to addressing three key questions surrounding implementation of the 2010 federal health care law.
Is it driving up the cost of insurance?
According to the Congressional Budget Office, 25 million Americans today shop for health coverage on their own. That figure could hit 46 million by 2017, as Obamacare’s exchanges get under way.
But a critical problem is emerging with the exchanges. The health law imposes a battery of new regulations, mandates, taxes and fees upon the individual-insurance market. According to research conducted by my colleagues and me at the Manhattan Institute and published at Forbes.com, many will see their rates double or even triple under the law. Healthier and younger individuals will face the steepest hikes.
The White House argues that subsidies will protect most people from these rate increases. But our interactive map (Google “Obamacare cost map“) shows that, on average, one’s income must be 40% below the median in order to save money on premiums. …
… Are young and healthy people signing up?
A key contention of the Obama Administration is that, despite the fact that health insurance will cost more under the law, the quality of that insurance is higher because it contains consumer protections, such as ensuring that no one can be denied coverage because of a preexisting condition.
But if you’re healthy and/or young today, you don’t have a preexisting condition. So doubling the cost of your insurance might not seem like such a great deal. And the success of the exchanges depends on the willingness of these healthier individuals to pay more for coverage in order to reduce the costs of other people who are sick.
Follow the link above for more detail and for Roy’s answer to his third question: “Are employers dropping coverage and moving workers into the ACA exchanges?”
